Get Off It, Pronto
by BetaCobra
Summary: A series of drabbles and one-shots, centered mainly around Eli "Hawk" Moskowitz. Re-uploaded.
1. Eyas

(A/N: A couple people asked me where this series went. Long story short, due to a technical error it was deleted. But I'm re-uploading it.)

For Johnny, there was no way around it: Hawk was a weird kid. And not weird in the way Miguel could sometimes be weird. Hawk was weird. He'd known the kid was odd when he first started taking classes in the dojo, back when he was still Lip. Johnny could tell it from the weird way he walked, the weird way his eyes never seemed able to keep focus, that weird thing he did with his hands, and the weird way the kid practically tripped over his tongue whenever he could actually get him to talk. It was bad enough that the kid's freaky lip was distracting and impossible not to notice, what with the ugly scar on it, but he had to be one of those "special" kids, too? That was just what he needed, Johnny had thought to himself. Did his insurance even cover him if something happened to a challenged kid in his dojo?

_Sometimes Hawk struggled to understand Sensei Lawrence._

Johnny honestly had had no hope for Lip, and so he wasn't surprised in the slightest when the kid had walked out like a crybaby after he'd tried toughening him up a little. He didn't entirely regret the things he'd said to Hawk then; eh, maybe in hindsight Miguel was right, maybe he had been a little harsh. But the kid was a sissy, the type of nerd who'd probably been treated with kid-gloves his whole life by the adults around him. Someone needed to do him a favor and finally give him a big shove in the right direction, to get him to man up.

_Sensei Lawrence had been absolutely brutal in his callout. All he'd wanted was for him to stop calling him Lip. The more Hawk thought about it, though, the more he realized that Sensei Lawrence had been right when he said sometimes people didn't always do what they were supposed to. Maybe his dressing down was the final wakeup call he'd needed for that to sink in. If he didn't want people to call him Lip, he had to give them a reason not to._

Pushing Hawk in the right direction had worked. You couldn't argue with results. He'd genuinely surprised Johnny when he came back to the dojo sporting a new mohawk and a renewed willingness to learn what he had to teach him. That was when Johnny could see that maybe the kid had a natural cobra in him, after all, like Diaz and Miss Robinson. He just needed to shed his geeky skin first. And Johnny could help him do that, he could mold this kid into a badass.

_Hawk listened to all of his Sensei's advice, because it couldn't be denied that Sensei Lawrence was one of the coolest people around, certainly the coolest adult he knew. If he wanted to be badass, he had to learn from the best. Hawk understood just the mohawk alone wouldn't be enough to become badass, although it was a big step in the right direction. He had so many things about himself that needed overhauled too, and thankfully Sensei was there to point them out. He worked hard to stop being so clumsy and ungainly. He suppressed his quirky habits. He even got good about the eye thing with enough effort, even when Sensei was drilling him particularly hard. He hoped his Sensei noticed his hard work._

Still, even after flipping the script, sometimes Hawk's behavior still felt…off. Artificial, that was the word, like the kid was playing the lead in some awkward comedy. But Johnny could live with that. He couldn't be a wonder worker with every student who came into his dojo; although the work he had accomplished with the kid was nothing less than a miracle, at least Hawk wasn't a total nerd anymore. In fact, he was actually a pretty skilled martial artist, once he pushed himself past his initial awkwardness.

_It was like sometimes Sensei expected Hawk to be some sort of mind-reader, to constantly anticipate what he wanted from him, whereas all Hawk wanted was some clarity. He hoped Sensei Lawrence wasn't one of those people who liked to play head games._

But then Hawk would go completely off the rails and freak out, totally out of nowhere. Johnny couldn't believe his student had acted the way he did at the All-Valley Tournament. One minute, Hawk was fighting against Robby, all normal, the next thing he'd flipped his shit and attacked his son when his back was turned, dislocating Robby's shoulder. What the hell was wrong with him? Was the kid one of those crazy ones? Or was he just dense?

_Sensei Lawrence was like so many of his other teachers: they would say one thing, but mean something else entirely. When Sensei taught the class that when they stood up for themselves against people who made fun of them, it should be with their fists, what he actually meant was only sometimes. When he'd told Hawk to show Robby what he had at the Tournament, he hadn't really intended him to. Because Hawk had applied what he'd been instructed – he'd attacked Robby because he mocked his haircut, what did it matter if he attacked him from behind or in front – but Sensei had gotten upset and humiliated him in front of the class for it. It made Hawk feel stupid. He thought he'd understood Sensei, but clearly he'd missed something._

Clearly something had been lost on the kid, on Hawk and Miguel both. So Johnny had to correct the mistake. He couldn't let those kids start making the same mistakes he did at their age. At least when Miguel messed up, Johnny had a handle on when he was back on track. With Hawk, sometimes Johnny thought he understood him, only for the kid to say or do something outrageous again. He swore, Hawk had to be doing it on purpose.

_Didn't his Sensei see that he was trying? Hawk was trying his hardest to be the badass his Sensei demanded he be. It required constant focus and all of his energy to keep up his identity as Hawk. It wasn't like he wanted Lip to ever peek back out, he honestly did everything he could to hide that side of himself at all costs. He took all of his failures that his Sensei pointed out and tried to contextualize them, so he wouldn't make the same mistakes again. Couldn't his Sensei see that?_


	2. True

They had spent the evening at the beach, and once the sun went down, Aisha suggested they walk along the shoreline, at least up to the pier, to see if they could find anything interesting that the ocean washed up. Hawk, Moon, and Demetri were down for that, so the four kids strolled along the coast that night, enjoying the cool sea breeze and salty air, relaxed with the knowledge that it was summer and none of them would have to be in school the next day.

Moon reached down and scooped up a small, cylinder-shaped cone from the sand. "This one's pretty," she pointed out, holding it up for Aisha to see.

"That's an olive-shell," explained the other girl, holding up a flashlight in one hand and using the other to touch the smooth exterior of the cone, admiring the intricate sienna design. "Good find, Moon. I'm hoping to maybe find a sand-dollar, let me know if you guys see one. Sometimes it's hard to find those that are completely intact, usually they're chipped to pieces."

Hawk certainly didn't need her to explain that further. His feet were already getting sore from walking over broken seashells in the tide; although at least the constant flow of ocean water helped relieve them. And it felt good to be some place where he could walk around shirtless, without concern for whether his parents would find out about his tattoo.

From where he was walking behind Aisha, Demetri's face perked up some when his flashlight caught one of the charms she had dangling from her backpack. "Oh hey, a fellow Ravenclaw," he said, reaching out his free hand to take a closer look at the one with the Hogwarts house crest. Seeing the warm smile Aisha shot him from over her shoulder, he raised a little fist-bump in the air. "Eagle Pride, right?"

"You got sorted in Ravenclaw, too?" asked Aisha, letting Demetri step up to walk beside her.

"An average of eight out of ten self-tests, including Pottermore," explained Demetri, swelling a bit with ego. From where he was walking at the head of the group, Hawk rolled his eyes, irritated by how much pride his friend said that with. "Sometimes the Sorting Hat will give me the occasional Slytherin verdict, but I'm really a Ravenclaw through and through."

"I only took a couple online sorting tests," admitted Aisha, pulling her backpack straps up higher. "I didn't need them to tell me what I already know." That much was true. It was obvious to anyone with a brain that Aisha was clever and witty, the smartest one among them.

Demetri, in full geek-mode, asked her, "So, does it bother you, too, that the movies changed the mascot from the eagle to a raven? Not to mention switching the secondary house colors from bronze to silver. I mean, Slytherin already had silver covered, what were they thinking with that redundancy? It makes getting Ravenclaw merchandise a pain in the ass, because you can't help but notice that it's wrong. It's hard enough finding Ravenclaw merch in the first place, and then when you do find some, it's from the movies. I'm telling you, it's a crime, they got it out for us smart kids."

A small shrug rolled off Aisha's shoulder. "I guess it bothers me a little," she replied. From the sounds of it, she appeared to be more of a casual fan; aka a normal person. Not an overly obsessed geek like Demetri. Hawk almost wanted to give her a warning to not get caught in Demetri's pedantic nerd rant. He always had one about how the movies messed up Ravenclaw's aesthetics. But thankfully Aisha took control of the conversation as she looked at the girl in front of her and asked, "What about you, Moon? Which Hogwarts House were you into?"

Hawk heard Moon laugh some under her breath. "Sorry, I never read the books, actually," she said, brushing her hair over her shoulder from where the wind had whipped it around. "I haven't seen any of the movies either. I never got around to it. It wasn't really my thing." Of course a cool girl like Moon wouldn't have been into something like kid adventures at a British wizarding school. That was _why_ she had been one of the cool girls.

Aisha next asked the question Hawk dreaded. "What about you, Hawk?"

Cutting in before Hawk could quickly think of a response, Demetri said, "Oh, Eli here took, like, a hundred of those self-sorting tests with me. Got Hufflepuff pretty much each time, he's like the Badger King." Hawk's ears turned pink at hearing his friend say that, and he was thankful that at least it was nighttime and his friends wouldn't notice. While Demetri's words didn't carry any sort of mockery in them, they did stir up memories of the disappointment Eli had felt when he'd been sorted into that house, time after time; after all, nobody wanted to be in Hufflepuff, that was the house for the leftovers.

But the only time he could ever get Gryffindor - the house he'd _wanted_ to be in - was when he cheated. So Eli had had to settle on the fact that he was just a Hufflepuff at his core. He'd tried to take some Badger Pride in that it was also known for valuing loyalty, justice, and hard work. But nobody thought of that shit when they heard Hufflepuff. They just thought of them as losers. A total joke.

At least his girlfriend didn't know that's what Hufflepuff meant. But Aisha would, though.

With a frown, Hawk stopped walking the shoreline until Demetri caught up with him, when Hawk then whispered irately, "Dude, can you knock it off?"

Demetri's face pinched, confused by the request. "What'd I say?" he asked defensively.

God, did Hawk have to spell it out for him? "Just...enough with the geek stuff, alright?" Why did Demetri have to embarrass him so much?

It didn't help, the way Demetri sighed and rolled his eyes, like Hawk was asking for something so unreasonable. "Yeah, whatever," he said, still confused and slightly irked at Hawk's hypersensitivity of late. After all, Aisha had been involved in the conversation, too, but his friend didn't get on her case about it. Only his.


	3. Ima

Ruth Moskowitz wanted everyone in the world to see that her son was perfect the way he was. After all, wasn't that what all parents wanted? Didn't all parents desire for their children to be loved unconditionally by their peers? Because it was true, Eli was perfect in the way that all children are perfect in the eyes of their parents. At his core, he was no different than any of the other boys his age. He had the same behavioral problems one expected of young children, Eli could get upset and throw a fit when he didn't get his way, but all of that was normal. He could also be unbelievably sweet and affectionate, people would have noticed that if they could see past his initial shyness. Too bad so many people couldn't even get past the scarring from his cleft lip.

Unwanted attention was almost inescapable whenever she would take Eli out anywhere. Ruth noticed it all, the staring, the constant double-takes, the pointing people pretended to be inconspicuous about, and some were even bold enough to make a comment. Most were curious rather than unkind, but it was unwanted attention nevertheless. Whether it was at the grocery store, the local park, the Synagogue, or even just walking down the street, Ruth Moskowitz was painfully aware of every time someone let their eyes linger too long on her son's face, forcing her to decide whether or not she should speak up or just let it slide.

And as much as she wanted to believe Eli was too young to notice, she knew that wasn't the case. Of course he noticed. It made him all the more shy and meek, to the point where he started getting upset whenever she suggested they go out. But Ruth knew she couldn't let him fall into that trap, and she tried her hardest to keep socializing him. Where was the line to be drawn? It made him anxious and embarrassed to be around others, but was she supposed to cut him off entirely from people? That wasn't an acceptable option.

Some people might have called her overprotective. Ruth didn't believe that was a fair accusation. She thought she was behaving perfectly normal, the same way any other mother would in her situation. Sometimes she was at a loss about how to explain things to him. How was she going to help Eli understand why people would stare? She could tell him that most people didn't intend to be deliberately malicious by it, most people were simply surprised or uncomfortable. Did it make a difference, though, when it kept happening over and over?

Especially when it came from other kids. At least when the parents and other adults stared, Ruth could handle those herself. She had a whole litany of responses at her disposal for them: _Can I help you? Would you please stop staring at my son? Don't look at him, look at me._

But she couldn't be with Eli when he started school. She couldn't just give him self-esteem, as much as she wished she could; giving a child confidence wasn't as simple as giving them a daily vitamin, after all, that sort of thing they had to build on their own. She tried. She and her husband both tried reassuring him how lovable he was. They told him he was clever, honest, and sensitive, and anyone would be lucky to have him as a friend. Ruth thought that as long as Eli knew he was loved at home, that would make up for anything that might happen at school. In hindsight, maybe that was naive on her part.

The first time she truly realized just how challenging the situation was going to be, it was picture day during his First Grade year. He'd shown up at the breakfast table wearing the nice sweater and slacks they had laid out for him. But as Ruth set down his pop-tart to eat, she spotted something unusual about him immediately. "Honey, what's on your lip?" she asked, kneeling down to wipe at the beige spot on his upper lip that was covering up his scar.

Eli tried shrinking away to evade her use of the napkin. "It's makeup," he answered matter-of-factly.

That's what Ruth suspected it was when she got a closer look. Eli must have gotten into her makeup case and crudely tried applying some of her liquid foundation on his upper lip. Her breath hitched in the back of her throat at hearing this confirmed, even while she warmly smiled at her son, letting him know she wasn't upset at him for getting into her belongings without her permission. She asked him casually, "Why are you wearing makeup?"

Eli looked down and started fumbling with his thumbs on the table, a calming habit he'd developed on his own. He told her, "You told Dad you wear it to make you pretty. I wanna be pretty, too."

Ruth's smile saddened, and she pressed her lips together firmly so as to keep her own emotions in check, in case Eli would misinterpret the tears she blinked back as being his fault. "Who told you that you aren't pretty?" She gently reached back out with the napkin to wipe off the foundation from her son's lip, who gave her no resistance this time.

Hunching his shoulders down after she'd finished cleaning his face, Eli hid his lip behind his fumbling fingers and mumbled into them, "Everybody."

She wanted to know just the right thing to say to him. Ruth Moskowitz wished fervently that she could find the magic words that would make things better for her son. Wasn't that what every parent wanted when their child was hurt, the power to make it go away? "Well, I think you're pretty," she reassured him, giving him a kiss on his cheek. But she understood then it wouldn't be enough. Eli knew people were treating him differently on account of his disfigurement, even though it was only a small part of who he was; even though his mother knew he was perfect the way he was.


	4. Fanesca

"Man, people really can't stop staring, can they?" remarked Hawk, taking his container out of his lunchbox from where he sat beside Demetri. He couldn't help but notice the way the other kids in the school were constantly glancing over at him; Eli had an acute sense when it came to knowing he was being gawked at. But he knew at least that the eyes peering over at him now were directed at his new haircut, and not at his lip like they normally were. It felt more like admiration than mockery, those looks. Hawk could get used to that.

Demetri gave a dismissive roll of his shoulder. "Well, you are kind of an eye-full nowadays." He still didn't know what to make of Eli's radical makeover. He hadn't expect the change to last longer than a couple days, tops, but over a week later and his friend was still sporting that new mohawk. Demetri couldn't definitively say he was supportive of the change. The whole thing felt off.

"Hey, either of you guys want some fanesca?" asked Miguel, sitting down at the lunch table with Hawk and Demetri. From his lunchbox, he pulled out a big tubberware bowl full of thick, yellow stew, along with a spoon and fork. "We still got, like, a gallon of this stuff from last week. I think my Ya-Ya made enough for all of Reseda, I should probably take some over to Sensei's place later."

Demetri made a face as soon as his nose caught a strong whiff of the soup after Miguel opened the container. "That's gonna get a hard pass from me," he said, going back to eating the cheeseburger he'd gotten from the cafeteria line.

"What's in it?" asked Hawk, peeking over to look into the dish. Unlike Demetri, he found the scent of certain spices enticing, and it looked more appetizing than the brisket he'd brought from home.

Stirring the soup with his spoon, Miguel furrowed his brows in contemplation and tried to recall what he'd seen his grandmother put into the pot. He must have watched her make it every year since he was a little kid, but it wasn't like he knew the recipe by heart. "Um, butternut squash, cabbage, rice, fish, milk, eggs. Man, it's got like a million ingredients, I don't know, I didn't make it."

From the look on his face, Hawk seemed tempted, but ultimately he shook his head. "Eh, probably shouldn't chance it, then," he said, pushing his food around with his fork. "It's day three of Passover, I can't risk breaking kashrut."

"Kashrut?" asked Miguel, pushing a straw into his carton of milk.

"Kosher," Eli clarified, taking a swig from his bottle of water. "We only really keep kosher for Passover, so if my mom ever found out I broke it, she'd kill me. Then my Bubbe, I mean my grandma, she'd resurrect me just to kill me all over again."

"I hear you there, my brother," joked Miguel, reaching over to clank his milk carton against Hawk's water bottle. "I couldn't have any red meat last week, none at all. Ya-Ya once told me if she ever caught me eating it during Holy Week, she'd serve _me_ in the fanesca. Now that it's over, all I want is a big, juicy burger, I've been dreaming about it all last week. I'm actually thinking of swiping Demetri's right now." He shot the boy a grin to show he wasn't being serious about that last part.

Eli held out his own tubberware. "Want some brisket? Talk about making enough for a village, I'm pretty sure my mom orders a whole cow whenever the holiday comes around."

Miguel couldn't reach over and fork a piece out of the container fast enough. "You're a life-saver, man," he said, savoring the fatty piece of beef as he plopped it into his mouth.

"Better take advantage of Eli's generosity now," quipped Demetri, swallowing the bite of his burger he'd taken, "because after about six days without bread, he's gonna get _really_ cranky." Seeing the look Hawk shot him at that, he shrugged again. "What? Just calling it like it is. All this talk about arbitrary diet restrictions for the holidays, makes me glad I'm an atheist."

Miguel and Eli shared a look of mutual understanding, the former replying, "What, makes you glad you get to miss out on my Ya-Ya's world-famous fanesca? Sorry, but that's your loss." He took a big spoonful of the stew and made a show of how delicious it was with the exaggerated sounds of satisfaction coming from his throat. "Mmmmmm. Delicious."

"What about Christmas?" Hawk pointed out to Demetri. "I know your family's big into that, I've seen what you guys do to your house in December; I'm pretty sure it's the only man-made structure visible from space around that time, you put up so many lights."

"That's different," dismissed Demetri, picking up one of his fries and using it like a pointer to enunciate his words. "I fully embrace the soulless, consumer-driven capitalist trappings of that holiday. And instead of restricting what we eat, it's a free-for-all, bacchanalian frenzy of a feast. None of this no-red meat or no-bread torture. Besides, Christmas is secular, anyway."

Eli rolled his eyes and shook his head. "No, it's not," he said, biting into another piece of brisket.

The three resumed eating their lunches for a while, making small talk until Miguel took another heaping spoonful of his stew and asked them, "So, you guys coming to practice today?"

Hawk nodded. "Wouldn't miss it." He'd taken fully to dedicating himself to his lessons at Cobra Kai. It filled his head so much, he had problems concentrating during class, because all he wanted was for school to be over so he could go to karate instead.

"And get slammed on the mat by your crazy Sensei again?" asked Demetri cynically, arching an eyebrow. "Yeah, sorry, that's also gonna get a hard pass from me. Besides, I've got new updates to download for _Crucible Control_."

"Dude, just give Sensei Lawrence another chance," said Hawk. Was Demetri seriously going to quit for good because of that incident? "He's actually not that bad, when you get used to how he does things."

"Ah, hooker talk!" pointed out Demetri, wagging a finger in distaste, earning a roll of the eyes from Miguel beside him. "How can you defend the guy, Eli? I seem to recall he took a little too much pleasure in making fun of your physical appearance."

Furrowing his eyebrows to the bridge of his nose, Hawk retorted emphatically, "Well he doesn't anymore. Not since I got this." He pointed a finger up to his fanning blue mohawk.

"Great, all you had to do was radically change your appearance to get him to like you. Congratulations. Sounds like a swell guy." Looking at Hawk and Miguel, Demetri shook his head and picked at the rest of his fries. "I swear, you two got, like, Stockholm Syndrome or something."


	5. Touch

Hawk stood in line with Aisha and Tory at the downtown movie theater. Calling it a line was an understatement, the queue was lined up clear around the block. The crowd had been attracted by one of those special matinée events, where they played back-to-back classic 80s films and made a big spectacle of it, resulting in long lines building up before they would open the doors. And Hawk _hated_ standing in long lines. It was nothing short of torture for him. Once or twice, he seriously considered bailing; after all, he knew the only reason Aisha and Tory even invited him to their girls' night was out of pity once they'd heard Moon had dumped him a couple nights prior. But, still, it had been nice of them to invite him along, it would suck if he ditched them just because he didn't want to stand in a queue for an hour.

It didn't make waiting in line any easier, however. Hawk must have checked his phone for the hundredth time, even though nothing on any of his apps had updated with anything since he'd last unlocked it five minutes ago. He'd started fidgeting with his necklace absent-mindedly, and had to stop himself, realizing he'd almost risked exposing the medal of honor that hung on it to the girls; he quickly tucked it back under the collar of his shirt, since he had every reason to suspect they'd be angry to find out he was the reason Sensei Lawrence had them do a thousand burpees at the dojo yesterday.

So, short of swaying back and forth on his toes, he had nothing to stimulate his mind with. If they didn't open the doors soon, Hawk felt like he was going to lose it. Meanwhile, Aisha and Tory were killing time engaging in girl talk. "Get out of here," said Aisha in disbelief at what Tory had just told her. "You mean you've never seen _Legally Blonde_?"

Tory popped a piece of candy in her mouth, and shook her head with a smile. "Nope. What, did I miss out on something big?"

"Oh, we're going to rectify this," said Aisha, taking a skittle out of the bag Tory was holding. "This next Sunday? You and me, my house, we're gonna stream it. No dudes this time, just an honest-to-God girls' night. No offense, Hawk."

Hawk was too busy being tensed up by the crowd around him to even notice Aisha mention his name. He flinched when he felt someone poke his shoulder, and mentally slapped himself for it; hadn't Sensei Lawrence done a good enough job unflinching him by now? When Hawk glanced over his shoulder, some college frat guy pointed to his hair and said, "Hey bro, I was just saying, those are some awesome spikes."

"Uh, thanks," Hawk muttered, turning back around. After the previous couple of days he'd had - confronting Demetri over his Yelp review, getting his ass handed to him by Robby and Sam, Moon ending things between them, him trashing Miyagi-Do, and getting his friends punished for it - not even someone complimenting his mohawk could perk him up.

A sharp laugh erupted from Tory, who pointed at Aisha. "Oh, so I haven't lived because I've never seen _Legally Blonde_, meanwhile you haven't even heard of _Coyote Ugly_?"

"No, I _have_ heard of it," Aisha corrected, "but only because I know Tyra Banks was in it."

"Uh-huh, well you better go ahead and add that to the watch-list," retorted Tory, eating another handful of skittles.

Hawk tensed again, this time from feeling something in his hair. He reflexively swatted his hand back, knocking away the finger of the frat dude behind him, who had poked it. Glaring back over his shoulder, Hawk narrowed his eyes and snapped, "Hey! Don't touch my hair, asshole!" The young man threw up his hands but laughed, like it was no big deal. Hawk bristled at that, but turned around again, only to see that Tory and Aisha were looking at him. "God, when are they gonna open the doors already?" he grumbled, crossing his arms irately.

Tory checked her phone. "Should be anytime now."

In a moment of self-consciousness, Hawk reached his hand around to check and make sure his hair was still perfectly in place. It felt like it was, although without a mirror there was no way to be sure. That prickled Hawk's nerves. Now he wasn't going to stop being restless until he could get to a bathroom and check it. He couldn't even stand the thought of someone touching his mohawk without his permission. He spent so much time in the morning putting it together, especially since he'd changed to styling it into liberty spikes. He knew it looked awesome, which was probably why so many people wanted to touch it. But the only people Hawk ever let touch his hair were Moon and Miguel, and even with them under specific circumstances.

His mohawk was everything to him, because it made him who he was. He wouldn't let anyone mess with it.

Aisha breathed a sigh of relief when the line started moving. "Finally, they're letting us in. You guys ready for some _National Lampoon_? I hear it's so stupid, it's funny."

"About time," Hawk muttered. Then, it happened again. He felt it. The man behind him touched his hair, this time using his hand to flick one of his spikes, like it was some sort of spring. Hawk didn't think twice. He pivoted around and viciously decked the guy in the jaw, sending him stumbling back into the people behind him.

That got the others in the crowd to interfere. Several of them pooled around the frat guy, shielding him from anymore attacks, while two Millennial-aged men grabbed Hawk's arms and pulled him back. He twisted out of their grips with a scowl and pushed them away. One of them yelled at him, "What the hell is your problem, kid?"

What the hell was his problem?! What was everyone else's problem? That's what Hawk wanted to know. What made people think they had any right to put their hands on him? Was he just supposed to keep taking it, like some sort of wimp? They would've liked that, wouldn't they? They would've loved for him to stay soft, wimpy Eli, the doormat everyone could pick on without fear of repercussion. Hawk was fucking sick of it.

At least his friends seemed to understand. The other of the two men asked them, "Is your friend crazy?"

Aisha pointed out, "He told him to not touch his hair, he did give him a fair warning."

"Plus, that guy's, like, twenty," added Tory, "what's he doing trying to pick a fight with a teenager?" That got the crowd on their side, and they watched as the frat dude's cheeks heated in embarrassment, even as he rubbed his sore jaw. Hawk glared at him and smirked. Mess with the cobra and expect to get bitten.


	6. Dodge

Dodgeball sucked, that was just an indisputable fact. Ninth Grade dodgeball sucked even worse, because by then kids started developing actual muscle power to really make it hurt to get struck by the big rubber ball. It made Demetri and Eli long for the comparatively easy days of middle school gym, somehow those classes had been less anxiety-inducing overall. High school was much more brutal, and the gymnasium had been turned into a war zone that day.

The sounds of rubber bouncing off of bodies filled the air, along with the cries of the kids being struck. Demetri and Eli stood off to the side, at the end of the basketball court, trying to look as non-threatening as possible, so as not to attract the notice of the boys dominating the game; it looked like the head soccer star Derrick Becker was currently in the lead, leaving a trail of victims in his wake. The two boys wanted nothing to do with the game, they were only participating so Coach McGee wouldn't flunk them. They didn't know why the coach even cared, all he did was remark about how scrawny and useless they were at sports half the time. Why bother even trying?

"Look, you're just gonna have to admit you're wrong," said Demetri, gesticulating his arms in accordance to how serious the conversation they currently were having was. "Captain Picard was a true diplomat. He always did the right thing, the whole brainwashed-by-the-Borg incident notwithstanding. He didn't go around looking the other way while one of his men killed a guy, like Captain Sisko. Oh, not to mention the time Captain Sisko used chemical bioweapons on a planet to make it uninhabitable, can't forget that. Like, wow, really good of Mr. Space Jesus there."

Eli's fingers fumbled with the hem of his gym shirt as he tried to keep an eye out for anyone about to throw a dodgeball at them. "Space Moses," he corrected Demetri. He hated when people got that wrong. Captain Benjamin Sisko was a Moses allegory, not a Jesus stand-in. One would think more people would have noticed that, what with the whole of Bajor being an allegory for the Jewish people. "Captain Sisko had to do it. Eddington wouldn't have stopped undermining the Bajor-Cardassia treaty if he didn't."

Shaking his finger, Demetri countered with, "Ah, no. It was a war crime, Eli. And that whole thing between Captain Sisko and Eddington was about ego, nothing more."

"Hey weenies, heads up!" a voice called out, just before a dodgeball flew out of nowhere and nailed Demetri square between his legs.

The boy dropped to his knees immediately, cupping the tender area in pain. "Ugh, bastard! Oh God!" he cried out, curling into a ball, a wince pinching his face tight.

Derrick ran up to them, grinning down at Demetri while he put his foot on the dodgeball to keep it from rolling farther away. "Wear a cup next time, Demetria," he mocked with an ugly laugh. "You're out."

A whistle blew. "Becker!" shouted Coach McGee from the sidelines, arms crossed. "What did I tell you about below-the-belt hits?"

The boy shrugged in a half-apology, calling out, "Sorry, Coach! Didn't mean to." Even though Derrick was obviously lying, that placated Coach McGee well enough; he didn't even bother to come over and check to see if Demetri was alright. Teachers were useless, always. And as soon as Coach McGee turned his back, Derrick peered over at Eli, who shuffled a couple steps away from him, shrinking into his shoulders, trying his best to avoid the other boy's gaze, like that alone would make him go away. "Hey, Ellie," said Derrick cracking another grin. "C'mere." Eli shook his head a little. Derrick just wagged his finger. "Come over here. I'm not gonna hurt you."

Eli didn't want to. He looked down at Demetri, who laid defeated on the floor as his only defense mechanism, so as to not attract anymore attention. But Derrick kept motioning for him to come over, even calling to him like he would a dog. Better to just get it over with, Eli thought. So he cautiously stepped back up to Derrick, who still had the dodgeball under his foot.

"That's right, come here," the other boy said. He then licked his thumb. "You got a little something on your…." Derrick reached over with said thumb and rubbed it over the scar on Eli's upper lip. Eli cringed and curled away, wiping at the spot with his palm, grossed out by the action. Derrick just laughed. "Oh, my bad. That's just part of your face. Oh well." With a shrug, he reached down, picked up the dodgeball, and chucked it at Eli's face with a hard *_wack_*. "Guess you're out, Ellie."

"Becker, no face shots!" shouted Coach McGee, who again did not move from his spot, only giving a stern glare in Derrick's direction. Like that would solve the problem.

Grasping at his stinging face, Eli fell to the ground beside Demetri, who sat back up into a sitting position. Watching as Derrick ran off to continue playing the game, to chuck his ball at another victim, Demetri shook his head. "Demetria and Ellie, huh? Bet he put all the power of his two remaining brain cells together to come up with that one." Casting a glance at Eli, he asked, "You good?"

Pulling his hands away to reveal a reddened nose, Eli squinted to try and clear the spots in his vision, but gave a nod in response. "Y-Yeah. You?"

"Not the worst injury I've suffered in gym. Don't think anything will ever top the baseball incident," he said, standing up. Dusting his shorts off, Demetri told Eli, "Next time, let's just stand in the middle and let them hit us right away. Y'know, face our deaths with a little dignity. Less of a hassle."

Eli would've liked to pick up the dodgeball and give Derrick a taste of his own medicine, to hit him in the face and groin and see how he liked it; Derrick was an asshole, he deserved it. But Eli had no skills to back up that desire for retribution. So he and Demetri just strolled over to the bleachers with the rest of the people who'd been taken out of the game, where at least they could continue their _Star Trek _conversation in peace. Until the next round, that was.


	7. Code

"It was a misplaced bracket."

Hawk had come over to Miguel's apartment in order to help update the Cobra Kai website. He'd always been good with computers and coding software, so when his friend had told him the site had crashed on him when he'd last tinkered with it the previous night, Eli had told him to leave it to the Hawk. At first, he had been hesitant to offer his expertise; Hawk didn't want to look like a nerd. But he decided to do Miguel the favor because 1) it benefitted his dojo to have a working website; and 2) it would make Miguel happy. It only took half an hour of scanning through the extensive coding to spot the issue.

Miguel groaned into his hands. "I knew it! I knew it would be something stupid like that," he admitted. It was ridiculous how one single wrong character in miles of coding could crash an entire site. "I spent, like, three hours looking at it over and over last night and couldn't find the problem."

Hawk smirked, a touch of smugness in his voice as he said, "You just need hawk eyes."

With that matter resolved, they were able to get to work on the other updates to the website, which were easy by comparison. The time flew by while they reclined on Miguel's bed, blasting some 80s music in the background to listen to as they worked. Hawk leaned with his back against the wall, typing at the keyboard, while Miguel laid down with his head resting on Hawk's legs, reading off the stats he'd texted into the notes on his phone.

"Y'know, Bert's actually getting much better," remarked Miguel as he looked over the notes he'd taken that day of everyone's improvements at the dojo. They were _all_ getting better, that couldn't be denied. Their Sensei really was shaping them into badasses, the numbers proved it. "After we get everyone's stats updated, let's upload the videos Aisha recorded. Some of those could make awesome gifs, especially the one of Sensei breaking the boards."

Squinting his eyes at the coding, Hawk suggested to him, "I think we should put in more sound-effects. Like, under each of our profiles. For mine, I was thinking of using the cry of a red-tailed hawk. Pretty cool, don't you think?"

Miguel couldn't help but grin at how over-the-top that was, but told him, "Sure thing, man. Sensei actually wanted to have some Guns N' Roses playing in the background when I told him websites could play music. I tried explaining copyright to him, but I'm not sure he gets it. But we should be able to find some free-for-use sound effects for everyone to pick out something."

While they worked on that, Rosa Diaz stepped into the room, humming to herself, carrying a laundry basket under her arm. Scanning the bedroom, she picked up a couple hoodies Miguel had strewn over his chair, putting them into the basket before heading over to the dirty clothes in his hamper. Seeing his grandmother, Miguel said, "Hey Ya-Ya, this is my friend, Hawk," pointing his thumb at the boy beside him.

Looking up at Hawk, Rosa couldn't hold back a hearty chuckle. "Ah, tu amigo parece más a un gallo," she remarked with a grin, motioning with her hand to Eli's blue mohawk with a little shake of her head.

Only knowing a few words of Spanish, but enough to know she was talking about him, Hawk asked Miguel, "Uh, what'd she say?"

"She says she likes your mohawk," Miguel lied before biting down on his bottom lip guiltily.

"Oh, uh, gracias," Hawk responded to Rosa with a smile. She just shook her head with another laugh before resuming picking up the dirty clothes.

In Spanish, Miguel told his grandmother, "_Please be nice to him, Ya-Ya, I told you he's my friend_."

"_Relax, Miggy_," she responded, putting more of his laundry into the basket, "_I'm only teasing_."

"_But he already gets teased a lot at school_," said Miguel. Rosa motioned to him that she understood and would cease with the teasing, and, having finished collecting his clothes, she left the room, going back to humming her previous tune.

Returning his attention to his phone, Miguel opened the Instagram app, hoping maybe Sam had posted something new. Spotting notification alerts, he checked them, and was surprised to see he'd gotten two new followers. Furrowing his brows at the names, he told Hawk, "Hey, man, I think your parents just followed me on Instagram."

"What?" asked Hawk for clarification. Looking down at the phone Miguel held up to him, he verified, "Oh yeah. My parents follow everyone I do. They're a little overprotective." Eli chalked it up to all of the cyberbullying he'd gone through. After learning what other kids posted on some of his pictures, his parents wanted to be sure they could keep a closer eye on things, in their misguided attempts to protect him. He added, "Please don't post anything that could get me in trouble."

"Jesus, really?" Miguel couldn't believe that. And he thought his mother could sometimes be too nosy about his personal life.

Just as his mind thought of her, there came a knock on the doorframe as Miguel's mother, Carmen, stepped inside. "Dinner will be ready soon," she told them. Looking at her son's friend, she asked, "Would you like to join us, um, Hawk?" It was an interesting nickname, to say the least, but Miguel had told her that was what the boy insisted on being called, so Carmen obliged. "I'm making empanadas and plantains."

"Sounds great, thank you," answered Hawk. Having only ever been invited to Demetri's house before, there was still a rush to having dinner at another friend's home. It felt nice, finally having more than just one friend.

When his mother left back towards the kitchen, Miguel glanced up at Hawk and asked, "Hey, depending on how long this takes to code, you wanna just spend the night? I mean, we don't have an extra bed, but I got a sleeping bag, or you could crash on the couch, whichever."

Eli wanted so badly to say yes, and he almost committed to it without thinking. But then Hawk cooled his own enthusiasm. It wasn't the lack of an extra bed that bothered him. It was his sleep enuresis. How could he have even forgotten about that for a second? Eli could've chanced it, though. It had been a couple of weeks since his last accident, he hadn't done it since the night of the first day he'd started classes at Cobra Kai. He seriously thought about it, wondering maybe if he'd be okay if he set three bathroom alarms.

But Hawk decided it wasn't worth the risk. He didn't think he could live through the embarrassment if Miguel found out he still sometimes wet the bed. What if he made fun of him? So he had no choice but to say, "I can't stay. I got this thing with my parents tomorrow morning, I can't miss it."

None the wiser to Hawk's real reason for declining his offer, Miguel told him, "No prob, my mom can just drop you off later. Whatever we don't finish tonight, we can get it done tomorrow or Sunday, no big deal."

But it _was_ a big deal, thought Eli dejectedly. It wasn't fair. Most other teenagers, especially his age, didn't have to worry about things like this. For them, ordinary activities like summer camps, school trips, or just spending the night at a friend's house weren't major sources of anxiety. They didn't have to concern themselves with bathroom alarms or rubber sheets, because they could actually control their bladders when they slept. Unlike him. It left Hawk feeling bitter at himself that he couldn't just enjoy spending a night with Miguel like a normal person. Why'd he have to be such a freak?


	8. Fix

"Turning on the blender," Simon Moskowitz called out by the kitchen counter. From where he was sitting at the table nearby, Eli covered his ears with his hands while his dad proceeded to make himself a smoothie, grinding the ice and fruit with the loud contraption. He couldn't stand the sound of the blender being used, it was like someone was stabbing at his eardrums with hypodermic needles repeatedly whenever someone turned it on.

Once his father was finished, his mother set down a small plate with a couple of pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies in front of him. "So, have you decided what you want to dress up as for the dance?" she asked him, sitting down in the chair opposite with her cup of coffee and iPad.

Eli didn't even want to go to the school's Halloween dance at all. He hated those types of extracurricular activities. Wasn't it bad enough that he had to spend most of the day in school already, but then they also expected him to use what should have been his free time back there as well? He would rather have spent the night watching the _Twilight Zone_ rerun marathon that was going to be airing on TV. Why did his parents keep pressuring him to be social? Didn't they understand that, no, he wasn't going to look back on this dance as an adult with fondness, like apparently they did with their own high school memories?

He just didn't want to show his face there at all. He was still recovering from the humiliation of Counselor Blatt exposing him as a crybaby in front of the whole cafeteria; he'd known something like that would happen when the school said it would make an announcement to address his cyberbullying. The last thing he wanted to do now was go to that dance. But his parents kept insisting he would feel better if he went.

They were wrong, but Eli had relented. What choice did he really have? At least Demetri and Miguel would be there. "I was thinking maybe a plastic surgeon," he muttered to his mother in response, looking back down at the laptop in front of him while his hand reached over to take one of the cookies to nibble on. Perhaps he had been inspired by all of the Internet surfing he'd done to come to that decision.

He'd spent hours looking at websites that morning for information on cleft lips again. First, he'd only been combing through forums, trying to find advice from other people about how they managed to live their lives with their scars. There were usually two types of responses: the ones who said they owned their looks and didn't let it bother them, but Eli didn't really believe what they said; and the people who were just as self-conscious as he was, who talked about how they were worried about how their scars would affect their ability to find romantic relationships or future employment.

Reading those comments had only made Eli more uneasy, so he exited out of the forums, and instead got caught up looking at before-and-after photos of people with clefts who'd gotten their lips fixed. Like, completely fixed. They were so lucky. For many of them, it didn't even look like they'd ever had freaky lips at all, they looked like they'd been born normal. It made him envious. It wasn't fair that his scar had turned out so bad, so completely noticeable, while others with the same congenital anomaly as he had got to have perfectly regular faces. Eli wished he could fix his. Without it, he didn't think he would look half bad. Maybe he'd then have a shot at getting a girlfriend finally.

There were options available, of course. He could get another surgery to try and improve the appearance of the scar. There was also laser therapy, to flatten the existing scar out some. However, the main deterrent to any option remained the overwhelming costs of such procedures. It sunk Eli's gut when he looked up how much plastic surgery like that would charge out of pocket. As a kid, he had not understood the financial strain he'd put his parents through, but as a teenager he could grasp the full magnitude of it. How could he ask them to spend even more money on fixing his lip once he realized how much they'd already paid?

On his own, Eli had tried other things. Using his allowance, behind his parents' backs, he'd tried what had to be half a dozen different types of scar-reducing creams. None of them worked, they were all bullshit, prime examples of false advertisements and preying on people's insecurities. That hope dashed, it only left him with the dream that one day he'd get a job where he would either have great insurance or where he'd at least make a lot of money, so he could pay for further surgery out of his own pocket.

"Oh, a plastic surgeon, huh?" asked his father playfully, taking a sip of his smoothie from where he leaned against the kitchen counter. "Wait until your Bubbe sees a picture of that. She always wanted me to be a doctor, now we can tell her we finally got one in the family." It was such a dad response, it almost made Eli cringe.

Ruth asked her husband, "Were they able to find enough chaperones?"

"It sounds like they did," answered Simon. Walking over to the table, he rubbed his wife's shoulder with his free hand. "Which means, we'll get the house to ourselves for a while," he added suggestively before heading over to the living room. Eli sank into his chair a little, embarrassed. But at least that meant his parents wouldn't be chaperoning the school dance. That was the last thing he needed on a night that was going to probably involve a lot of standing awkwardly around, doing nothing; at least his mother wouldn't be there, trying to force people to be nice to him.

Taking a drink of her coffee, his mother looked over at him and said, "I'll be over at the mall later today, I'll stop by Spirit Halloween and pick you up a doctor's costume. Shouldn't be any problem finding one."

"Make sure it's one with a surgical mask," stressed Eli, peering up at her from over the lid of the laptop he was hunched over. He cast his eyes back down when she gave him a concerned look at that request. So he added, "I want to be a plastic surgeon. I need it to look authentic." At least with the mask, he wouldn't really be showing his face at the dance. Maybe it would make the others forget about the announcement in the cafeteria.


	9. Drink

The bell attached to the door of the convenience store at the strip mall jingled as Hawk exited from the establishment, carrying two cold brown bottles in his hands. With a smug smirk, he tossed one of them to the other boy outside, who was sitting on the curb in front of the barred window. "Score another one for the Hawk," he boasted, watching Miguel scramble to twist around and catch the glass bottle of beer in time before it could smash against the concrete. Sitting down beside him, Hawk reached into his back pocket and took out the bottle opener he'd also purchased, opening his own bottle before handing it to Miguel for him to open his.

"Okay, so you were right. I can't believe he keeps falling for it," said Miguel, with a slight shake of his head, popping the cap off the Coors Banquet bottle. Hawk had told him he'd have no trouble buying a couple of beers for them, and he had been correct. Miguel honestly couldn't believe it. The convenience store owner had to know them all by now, there was no way the guy didn't recognize Hawk as one of the high school students taking classes at the Cobra Kai dojo next door; he was kind of hard to miss, with that blue mohawk of his. He had to realize Hawk wasn't actually twenty-one years old, or that he'd have a name like Walter Hawkman of all things.

"He already let me buy liquor before, remember?" pointed out Hawk, taking a sip of the beer in his hand; the taste of beer wasn't his favorite, but he was getting used to it. "What's it gonna look like if he's suddenly like, 'Oh this ID's totally fake' now? Relax. Enjoy the moment. We got a connection now. He's cool."

Miguel suspected it was less about the man being cool with serving beer to underage teenagers, and more of a case where the guy must have had many more pressing problems on his mind. Miguel had more than once overheard Sensei stressing out over how the rent was being raised again, due to random property values increasing in that area of Reseda. The convenience store owner probably cared more about that than some kids sneaking some beer. "I saw him look at me through the window," he said, taking a gulp from the bottle. "Surprised he didn't stop you after that. He had to know you were getting one of those beers for me, right?"

Arching an eyebrow, Hawk explained, "Oh, you just gotta be confident, people will believe anything if you're confident. I told him my bitch was outside waiting for me, and she's the one who wanted a couple of brewskies." The smirk on the corner of his mouth curled higher. "Guess that makes you my bitch, huh?"

That made Miguel choke down a sudden chuckle so hard, beer almost came out of his nose. "Shit, man, don't make me laugh when I'm drinking," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Nudging Hawk with his elbow, he added, "And, uh, if I recall correctly, _you_ were the one who suggested we get a couple beers, my good bitch."

Hawk laughed at that. The both of them needed a drink after the day they'd had. Sensei Lawrence had put all his students through the ringer during class, all the while Sensei Kreese was watching them from the sidelines; maybe Sensei Lawrence really wanted to show off his teaching skills in front of his old Sensei. Miguel and Hawk had already been wiped out from that, and then they also had to clean the mats again, as part of their punishment for prying into Sensei Lawrence's personal life and confronting him about his relation to Robby Keene. Three days down, two more to go. Hawk would consider it a miracle if his shoulder wasn't dislocated by the end of the week, it was so sore from scrubbing the mats.

On top of that, the day was a total scorcher. Summers in California sucked, and they continued to suck worse with each passing year. So instead of buying cold sodas, why not make it a couple of beers, Hawk had thought? Sensei Lawrence was probably doing the exact same thing as they were at that moment in his office, sitting back in his chair, chugging a cold one down with Sensei Kreese. If it was good enough for him, it was good enough for them, too. There was a reason he was their role model, after all.

Taking the bottlecap in his other hand, Hawk pinched it between his thumb and middle finger. "How do you think Sensei does that trick, where he flicks the cap?" he asked, trying to imitate the cool move. When he attempted it, however, the thing only ended up bouncing off his sneaker onto the asphalt in front of him. Hawk made a face, a touch embarrassed at his inability to replicate the trick.

"I don't know," admitted Miguel, swallowing a gulp of the Coors Banquet. He nudged Hawk again and asked, "Why don't we go inside right now and ask him to show us how?"

"Yeah right," Hawk snickered, taking another swig from his beer. "So he can see us drinking alcohol and chew our asses out again? I've been reamed enough for a while, thanks."

Miguel downed more of his drink, smacking his lips at the foamy taste. "Nah, I don't think Sensei would care. He gave me a drink once, after my date with Sam." At the mention of his ex-girlfriend's name, Miguel's face fell a little. It probably didn't help that the beer would bring up memories of why Sam was his ex-girlfriend in the first place, the night at the canyon when Miguel had gotten so drunk he accidentally hit her.

Giving him a look from the corner of his vision, Hawk told him, "Congrats, you made it a whole three days without bringing _her_ up. A new record for you." Hawk had no idea what he needed to do to help Miguel get over Sam LaRusso. Pointing out the logics of how his friend was obviously better off without her didn't work. And other than that, Hawk didn't know what to do. Moon was his first girlfriend, this wasn't exactly his area of expertise.

"Sorry," muttered Miguel, rubbing the back of his neck with a sigh and casting his brown eyes down to look at the asphalt, like it was the most interesting thing in the world. That was the last thing Hawk needed now, for Miguel to get mopey. He didn't want to see that, he'd seen enough of it already.

"Forget about all that," said Hawk, standing up and chugging down the rest of his beer in three big gulps before tossing it at the nearby garbage bin. He missed, and the glass bottle broke into a dozen pieces. Pinching his face sheepishly at that for a moment, he let it roll off his shoulders and looked down at Miguel. "Let's talk about what we're going to do at Valley Fest to put Miyagi-Do in their place. That'll be your chance to show Sam she made the wrong choice. You already kicked Robby's ass at the tournament, now you can upstage him again, in front of Sam this time. Make her want what she can't have, man."

That seemed to have a positive effect on Miguel, judging from the scheming smirk that lit up his face.


	10. Stare

"Quiet!" snapped Sensei Lawrence, bringing his rowdy class to attention immediately. They all took their customary positions as he stepped in front of them to give the lesson of the day. "I have taught all of you how to strike first. Today, I'm going to teach you how to intimidate your opponents before you even do that. You know how to put fear in some asshole who's giving you shit? You stare him down."

He walked down the line of his students as he talked, looking them all in the eyes as he did so, watching as their irises followed him. "When a cobra has you in his sights, he doesn't let you go. Whether you move left or right, his eyes never leave your face. You can't win a staring contest against a cobra. And do you know why?" He directed the question to the student he was in front of at the moment.

Hawk responded matter-of-factly, "Because snakes don't have eyelids, Sensei?" Beside him, Aisha masked a snort with a fake cough.

Sensei Lawrence narrowed his eyes some. "No, smartass, it's because a cobra puts you in a trance when he locks eyes on you. That's why they're so badass. And that's what you're going to learn today. Alright, pair up, groups of two. I want to see each of your game faces. Stare each other down. The first one to break eye contact drops to the ground and does ten pushups. Then you get up and do it again, until I tell you to stop."

His class did as they were told. Johnny Lawrence walked around to observe their progress. Miguel and Bert squared off; if it could be called that, considering Bert was only about half Miguel's height. But the half-pint wasn't half-bad at all. He returned Miguel's harsh stare with a wall of fortitude of his own. The two held their scowls, narrowing their eyes and furrowing their brows. Then, after a few long minutes of it, Miguel finally burst out in a chuckle, flashing his metal braces with his smile. "Diaz, ten pushups!" said Sensei Lawrence.

Soon the whole dojo was filled with the sounds of kids erupting into fits of snickering as each group eventually had a loser who broke away from eye contact. The loser would do their pushups and then be right back at it, with an even harder game face. Each team had about an even streak between the two participants, one would lose one round but then win the next. All except for one team, that was.

"Miss Robinson, Hawk, what seems to be the problem?" demanded Sensei Lawrence, stepping up to the two. Hawk was bent over, hands on his knees, catching his breath from having just completed his seventh set of pushups. Aisha looked puzzlingly at her Sensei, only able to shrug her shoulders at his question. No doubt she was good, _really_ good, but it almost didn't even feel like she was having to try at all. No sooner would her forceful brown eyes lock onto Hawk, then a few seconds later he would tear his glance away from them. At first, she took it as a sign of her skills, but by the fourth time in such a short while, she suspected something really was wrong.

Turning his attention to Hawk, Sensei Lawrence asked him again, "What's going on?" He already had a suspicion. It wasn't the first time he'd noticed the kid having issues like that, it was pretty hard not to spot.

Eli stood up straight, but had trouble forming the words to articulate why he was having such a problem with the drill. Making eye contact wasn't the issue; maintaining it was. "Um, I…I don't know, Sensei," he admitted, cringing inwardly at the harsh stare coming down on him. "I'm not doing it on purpose."

Johnny couldn't help but shake his head. God, the kid really had been coddled his whole life, hadn't he? "Look," he said, "you can't take your eyes off your enemy when he's got you in his sight, alright? You can tell in an instant whether someone is a man or a pussy by the way he meets your eyes. Now, try it again, with me this time."

With his Sensei standing in front of him, Hawk looked up at his face, meeting his blues eyes with his own. But then, a few seconds later, they reflexively darted away. "Jesus Christ, really?" sighed Sensei Lawrence, with more than a hint of irritation in his voice. But he wasn't about to give up. "Okay, again." Hawk closed his eyes for a moment before trying anew. The result was the same. "Again!" If Hawk couldn't even get this down, thought Johnny, how the hell did he expect to place in the All-Valley Tournament? He knew the kid could do it, if someone would just push him hard enough.

Eli tried again, as he was told. He locked eyes with Sensei Lawrence and attempted to hold it. Yet, after just a couple of seconds, there came that feeling of pain again. It felt like his Sensei's eyes were lasers, drilling hot, burning holes into him. He was seeing too much, and his brain couldn't sort it fast enough. It was overwhelming. So Eli looked away again on reflex, to get some relief. And shame washed over him once more. He didn't _want _to be a pussy.

"Listen, we're not leaving until you get this," said Sensei Lawrence. Knowing the kid would never be able to actually stare him down, Johnny thought of an alternative. "You're gonna look me in the eyes for thirty seconds. We'll start with that. Miss Robinson, keep time."

Aisha nodded, running over to retrieve her phone from her bag. "Yes, Sensei."

Hawk felt overwhelming embarrassment. Why did he have to make such a fool of himself, especially in front of all his new friends? But he did as his Sensei instructed, and kept trying. That time he lasted fifteen seconds. "Again!" barked Sensei. Then he made it nineteen seconds. The tension in his shoulders pulled tight, winding him up. "I got all day, Hawk!" It was so confrontational, meeting someone's eyes. There was so much pressure, it made his breath quicken. He couldn't even hold it for thirteen seconds that time, he actually did even worse. "Look, I'm not gonna let you stop until you do this right."

Closing his eyes for a moment, Hawk took a couple of deep breaths, trying to will his muscles into loosening up. _Don't be a pussy_, he kept telling himself over and over in his head. He had to show his Sensei that he could do this. He was a Cobra. He had to be.

So Hawk braced himself and opened his eyes, targeting them back on Sensei Lawrence's. Clenching his jaw, he pushed past his first instinct to look away. How did the others find it so funny to stare at each other? To Eli, it just stressed him the hell out. While Sensei glared at him, he could only wonder if his teacher could actually see right through him with that look. Could he see past the Hawk exterior, did Sensei spot that he was still weird and awkward Lip when he looked in his eyes?

Twenty seconds passed, and Hawk's hands gripped the hem of his gi top so hard his knuckles blanched, to force himself from glancing aside. Every part of his brain screamed at him to look off to the side, or down at his feet, or literally anywhere else. Just look away, and that sharp pain would stop. But Hawk beat that urge down and blocked everything else out. Even as his arms trembled and his chin started to quiver from the force of how tight he was clenching his jaw, he forced himself to keep staring. His eyes were stinging so bad….

"Twenty-nine…thirty!" announced Aisha.

Eli immediately tore his eyes away, blinking them repeatedly for relief while he took a couple more deep breaths. He felt Sensei Lawrence give him a quick pat on the shoulder. "Alright, good work," his teacher praised; and Hawk soaked that in. "I want you to keep practicing that on your own. Next time, I expect you to be able to hold it for a full minute, understood?"

Hawk didn't fully comprehend how this would make him into a badass. But obviously Sensei knew more about the subject than he did. And it wasn't his place to question him. He would just have to try and get better at it. He'd practice for hours if he had to. He'd get it down, even if it killed him. If that was what it took to not be a pussy, to not be wimpy little Eli, Hawk would do it. "Yes, Sensei."


	11. Y

"Oh shit, he must've texted me during class. He wants me to be there in thirty minutes, there's no way I can make it in time. If I don't show up, he's never gonna let me forget it, he'll probably cut my hours. Fucking fantastic!"

Stepping out of the Cobra Kai dojo, Hawk heard Tory exclaim that to her boyfriend Miguel, a mixture of frustration and panic clear in her voice while she looked at the text messages on her phone. And as soon as he spotted him walk out the door, Miguel called out to him from the curb. "Hawk! Hey man, we got a bit of a crisis, can I ask a favor?"

Rolling the shoulder he had his backpack hanging from, Hawk asked, "What's up?"

"Tory's boss texted while she was in class," explained Miguel, walking up to him. "Someone at her work called out at the last minute, he wants her to come in early, but if she catches the bus it won't get her there in time. It's really important that she's not late, she really needs this. Any chance you could give her a ride?"

Hawk gave a nod. "Yeah, no prob. Anything for a Cobra sister," he said, flashing a smirk at Tory before reaching out with the clicker in his hand, pressing the button to unlock his car in the parking lot.

"Thanks, Hawk, I really appreciate it," said Tory, picking up her bag, and she hurried immediately over to the Sentra with the red stripe painted down the middle.

Watching as she climbed into the passenger's seat, Miguel told Hawk, "Thanks, I owe you one." Then, with a sly arch of his eyebrows and a cheesy grin spreading over his mouth, he ribbed his friend and asked, "So, am I good to leave my girl alone with you? You won't try putting any moves on her, will you?"

"I make no promises," responded Hawk, with a smug smile of his own. "If she finds herself attracted by the natural charm of the Hawk, you can't really blame me for that, it's out of my control." He raised a fist, though, which Miguel bumped with his own, to show that he wasn't being serious. The wound from Moon dumping him was still too fresh in his mind for him to even think about finding a new girlfriend, much less stealing his best friend's.

Hawk had Tory put in the address to the roller rink in his phone's GPS, and then they were on their way. It said they'd arrive in fifteen minutes, which was plenty of time. While Tory was busily reaching into the bottom of her bag, moving stuff around to find whatever she was looking for, she said, "That red stripe on your car, is that new, or am I just blind and never noticed?"

"Just got it painted a couple days ago," answered Hawk, leaning back in his seat, one hand on the wheel while he turned to get on the highway. Giving the girl next to him a glance, he embellished, "It's that extra touch, y'know, that gives it that edge."

Tory grinned. "Yeah, gotta admire a guy that not only color-coordinates his wardrobe with his hair, but also makes sure his car matches, too. You're more committed to the whole look than most girls I know." She retrieved a case and pulled out a container of powder foundation from it and a small brush along with it. "Do me a solid and try to avoid any potholes," she said, pulling down the passenger seat's sun visor and opening the mirror in front of her before beginning to apply the makeup. It took only a couple minutes for her to spread the foundation evenly over her face with the brush. That done, she tossed the supplies back in her case, and pulled out what looked like a colored pencil.

Eyeing Tory while she applied eyeliner expertly, Hawk switched lanes and noted with a small hint of admiration, "Surprised you can do that in a moving car."

"This ain't my first rodeo," she stated, moving the pencil to color in a wingtip at the corner of her left eye.

"Do you really have to wear all that?" asked the boy next to her. Moon hadn't worn much makeup at all, thought Hawk, now that he thought about it. At least, not that he could tell. She'd worn some lip balm, right? Maybe some eyeshadow a few times? He wished he'd paid closer attention when he'd had the chance.

Pulling out a tube of red lipstick, Tory looked at him like he was crazy for asking such a question. "Experience has taught me that, yeah, I do. I don't really have the option to show up places without looking on point. I mean, maybe Miss Rich Encino Bitch can look like a slob in public if she wanted to, but when I do it, they'll just be like, 'Oh, because she grew up poor, she puts no pride in her appearance.'" Seeing Hawk furrow his brows a bit, she clarified, "You know how you feel like you always need to show up to class with your mohawk styled completely perfect each time? It's like that." Tory was good at explaining things in a way he could understand clearly.

Tory then let out a groan, shoving things around in her bag again. "Shit, I forgot to put the new deodorant in my bag this morning. Great, just great," she grumbled, dropping her bag to her feet, running her fingers through her gradient-blonde hair in frustration.

"I got some body spray in my bag, in the back seat, front pouch," Hawk pointed out, making the exit that Siri told him to take. "If you don't mind smelling like a man," he added with a smile.

"Ha! Better than smelling like a sweaty pig," declared Tory, reaching behind her to get the body spray from Hawk's backpack. She found it easily enough, a can of Old Spice. Rolling it over, she caught the name of the scent, and grinned. "Hawkridge, huh? You're so out there, I love it."

Hawk's cheeks heated a little at the way she chuckled under her breath. "What?" he asked, wondering if he was the butt of some joke he'd missed.

"Nothing," Tory assured him, bringing the top of the can up to her nose, in order to give it a sniff. "Hmm, vanilla and sandalwood. Smells pretty good, actually. It'll do just fine." She brought the can under her shirt and sprayed some under her armpits without a second thought before tossing it back into Hawk's bag.

The Sentra drove into the parking lot of the roller rink, and Tory hopped out, throwing the strap of her bag over her shoulder. Looking at her phone, she said, "Made it, with ten minutes to spare." Peering through the open window, she told Hawk, "Thanks again. See you later." Hawk watched as she walked speedily to the door and waited until she was inside before driving off.


	12. Tattoo

"Alright, hose me down," said Hawk, tossing Miguel a spray bottle of sunscreen lotion before stripping off his shirt and turning around. He tried not to shiver when a cold mist of the lotion hit his back, covering his tattoo in a sheen of protective oil, and he rolled his shoulders out when he felt Miguel rub the spray in. His friend used a firm grip with his hands, which felt surprisingly good, since he didn't linger too long around his spine or use too light a touch. When Miguel finished, Hawk took the spray back and took care of his legs, torso, and face before handing it out for the other boy to use.

Miguel checked the label and grinned. "I think SPF80 is a bit overkill for me. Good for your pasty-ass though," he joked, spraying his arms and legs down and rubbing the lotion in. Even with his complexion, it was better to be safe than sorry, because the sun was beaming hot that day at the beach. His mother had told him to always err on the side of caution, what with the ozone layer being in shambles; and especially when the weather got over 90F without a single shade of cloud in sight for protection.

Sticking the bottle back in the pocket of his swim trunks, Hawk asked him, "Aren't you gonna take your shirt off, too?"

"Nah, I'm good," said Miguel, pinching his thumb and forefinger on his tank top and airing it out a bit. The humidity was killer.

Hawk shook his head. "Dude, open your eyes," he retorted firmly, "don't you see how many babes are out there?" He motioned with his thumb over his shoulder to the beach, where numerous girls were hanging out, either frolicking in the ocean waves, playing beach games, or laying down on towels to get sun tans.

"Oh, is that why you do it, to show off in front of girls?" asked Miguel, stepping off the boardwalk and onto the hot sand. He kicked off his sandals and put them and Hawk's in the beach tote he had strapped over his back. "Should I tell Moon she's got anything to be worried about? You're not a player, are you?" he jested as they walked along the beach.

Beside him, Hawk simply responded, "Just because I'm off the market doesn't mean chicks can't window shop at this establishment. But Moon knows she's the only girl I'd come home to." Seeing the way Miguel smiled and shook his head, he added, "It's _you _who's back on the market, man. Give them something to admire, you haven't done all that working out for nothing, right? Show them what a Cobra Kai karate champion looks like."

"Maybe some other time," said Miguel, sticking his hands in his swim trunks pockets, curling his toes into the wet sand in the shallow surf. The cool water felt especially good on a hot day like that. Briefly, he thought that maybe it would actually be a good idea to take off his shirt and go for a swim; but convincing Hawk to get his hair wet in public would be like arguing with a brick wall.

Hawk just rolled his eyes at his friend's excuse. "Whatever. At least they'll get to appreciate my tat." That was the best thing about going to the beach for Hawk, getting to show off his back tattoo, the flying raptor with the electric blue mohawk, in front of everyone. It was one of the few places he felt safe walking around without a shirt. What was the point of having some badass ink if he didn't get to display it every now and then? "Uh, speaking of which," he tacked on, suddenly a touch sheepish, "please don't take any pics of my back and put them on Instagram. Don't forget, my parents follow you."

"Wasn't really planning on it." Arching his brows, Miguel looked at him and suggested, "Don't you think maybe you ought to just come clean to them? This kind of thing can eat at you if you let it go on too long. I remember this one time I tried keeping this big secret from my mom, and I just couldn't, the guilt caught up to me. I actually lost sleep over it. I ended up telling on myself, like, a week later. You really think you can keep this a secret for the next several years?"

"Tell my parents about my tattoo?" asked Hawk incredulously. "You're kidding, right?" This was no small secret, it wasn't something inconsequential that his mom and dad would just get over a few days later with a mild slap on the wrist as punishment. This was huge.

"Better to ask for forgiveness than permission," pointed out Miguel with a raised finger. "That's what I've learned. And trust me, I've done a lot of things that have gotten me in trouble with Mom and Ya-Ya, but it was never big enough that they'd literally kill me for it. I bet your parents will be more understanding than you think. I mean, after the shock wears off."

Shaking his head, Hawk stressed to him, "You don't get it, my parents are Jewish."

"What's that got to do with it?" asked Miguel, shrugging his shoulders in confusion. "You guys preach forgiveness is a virtue, too, right?"

"Yeah, uh, we do, but we also got this thing against getting tattoos," explained Hawk, following beside Miguel as they continued to walk the shoreline. "It's one of the commandments."

Miguel's face pinched. "Really?" he asked. "I mean, I haven't been to Mass since Easter, but I'm pretty sure that tattoos aren't mentioned in the Ten Commandments at all. No murder, no stealing, honor your parents, but nothing there about no tattoos."

"That's because _we_ got 613 commandments total," Hawk pointed out, shaking his head again at Miguel's faux pas. He laughed a little under his breath. "Pfft, Ten Commandments, please, get on my level." Of course, not that he or his parents kept all 613 mitzvot, such a task was virtually impossible. His mom and dad weren't even Synagogue-every-Saturday-morning types; excluding holidays, they were lucky if they made Shabbat service once a month. But there were many traditions that his parents did stick to, some of them very fervently, and one of those was the rule against getting permanent tattoos.

He'd gotten his hawk tattoo largely on impulse, and while he loved it more than anything, besides his mohawk, and didn't regret his choice to have it done, it _terrified_ Eli to think what his mother and father would do to him if they ever found out about it.

"613? Holy shit!" exclaimed Miguel with a low whistle, his eyes widening some. "Uh, I don't know, can't you and your parents go and ask your rabbi for forgiveness and then do, like, three Hail Marys; I mean, Hail Moseses, or whatever?"

Hawk busted out laughing so hard, he had to grasp and lean on Miguel's shoulder for support, almost choking on air. Holding his side, his face turning red, he said, "Ha! Oh my God, that was the most Catholic thing I've ever heard in my life! Oh shit, I'm gonna collapse a lung!"

Shrugging innocently once more, Miguel grinned and said in his defense, "Dude, I don't know how you guys deal with these kinds of things. I'm just a sheltered Roman Catholic Latino kid from Reseda. Throw me a life-preserver, I'm drowning here!"

Patting him on the shoulder affectionately, Hawk beamed and said, "'Three Hail Moseses,' shit, man, I gotta treat you to a snow cone for that one! You just made my day!"


	13. Prank

_Meet me outside the boys' cabin at 10:30. I'd really love to finally talk to you. If you show up, I promise I'll have a great surprise waiting for you. - Rachel_

It was a cool summer night outside, with crickets chirping and a breeze rustling through the branches of the trees overhead. Eli fumbled with the drawstrings on his hoodie, peering cautiously around in the woods outside the boys' cabin. In her letter, Rachel had not specified where exactly she wanted to meet him, all she'd said was outside the bunks. Now Eli was worried that maybe one of the camp counselors would find him first before he could see her, and he'd get in trouble. Nobody was supposed to be outside the cabins after 9:00PM.

But Eli steeled his resolve, allowing himself to feel excited of where the night might be going. He thought of the other letters Rachel had left him on his bed the previous couple of days. He had enjoyed reading them over and over, but had lacked the courage to approach the girl himself during the daytime. She was so pretty, and she thought he was cool, what if he made a fool of himself? But her last letter had finally given him the willpower to collect his nerves and take a chance. Still, he was glad she had initiated the meetup.

What would be the surprise, he wondered? Did she want to be his girlfriend? He'd seen lots of boys and girls kissing at camp, maybe she would want to kiss him, too? Wait until he told Demetri about that, if it happened, he'd never believe it.

"Hey, Eli!" a voice called out. Eli looked over to see three figures step out from behind a couple trees. He recognized them: Jacob, David, and Aaron, all of them thirteen, a year older than he was; actual teenagers. He had barely interacted with them at all during camp so far, he'd only really noticed them as the kids who had raised a big ruckus during the previous Shabbat after the counselors had told everyone to leave their electronics in the cabins that day. Jacob, the boy who'd called out to him, asked, "Were you looking for someone? Maybe we can help you."

Eli blinked, confused, and fussed more with his hoodie's drawstrings. He stuttered, "I-I…I…."

David laughed, setting the box he was holding down. "Man, you really fell for it, didn't you?" he asked, shaking his head at Eli's gullibility. "I can't believe it. Geez, what a loser. How dumb you gotta be to not even notice the difference between girls' and guys' handwriting?"

In a falsetto voice, Aaron mockingly shrilled, "Oh Eli, you're so smart, you're so funny, I can't believe how cool you are, Eli." All the boys guffawed at the performance, pointing their fingers at him in open contempt. And that's when it sunk in for Eli that it had all been a setup, a cruel prank. Rachel hadn't written him those glowing letters, the other boys did.

He started to slowly back up, shuffling his sneakers in the pine needles under them, shrinking some into his shoulders. Only to then have big arms suddenly grab him, as a fourth boy attacked from the shadows, wrenching Eli's arms behind him. Asher, the last member of their posse. Eli tried to squirm out of his grip, but the bigger kid kept his hold tightly. "Where are you going, nerd? Don't you know it's after curfew? Should've stayed in the bunk," he said with a laugh.

Aaron poked Eli on his forehead. "Did you really think _any_ girl would think you're cute?" Eli looked away from him to avoid the question, to avoid those penetrating eyes. It felt like his chest was tightening up, his breath becoming quick and shallow, and his chin was starting to quiver. "Yeah, I asked Rachel if she'd kiss you for ten bucks. You know what she said? She said she'd rather kiss a skunk's ass than _that_ freaky lip of yours."

That got them all laughing at him again. Eli didn't understand. He'd never directly interacted at all with the boys during camp. Why had they chosen him to target? Why were they making fun of him? Why were they being so mean?

Reaching down into his box, David pulled out what looked like a handful of gym socks, and as he tossed one each to Jacob and Aaron, Eli saw that the ends of them were swollen round, like someone had stuffed a ball of some sort into each of the socks. They almost looked like maces, the way the other boys started to swing them in preparation for the attack. Eli's stomach dropped, and he started shaking, knowing what was about to happen. He squirmed harder in Asher's death-like grip, but to no avail. Meanwhile, David looked at his leader and asked, "You sure he won't tell on us? I can't get in trouble with my parents again, man."

"Don't worry, he won't squeal. Watch this." Jacob stuck his sneering face next to Eli's and goaded, "Go on. Call for help. I'm giving you a fair chance. Go on, do it." Eli parted his lips and tried to make the words. His mind screamed at him to cry out, but his tongue wouldn't move, leaving his mouth opening and closing, but no words coming out. "See?" Jacob said. "He can't do it. He's a fucking r-" He threw the r-word out with such casual disregard for the distress it caused Eli to hear it.

Jacob then swung his makeshift weapon and whacked Eli hard in the abdomen with it. All the boys whaled into him with the tennis ball-filled socks, at his stomach, his head, his legs, anywhere they could hit. Each strike became more sensitive and unbearable than the last, made all the worse by the insults they threw at him. Nerd. Loser. Freak. They unloaded a whole repertoire of vulgar words on him, their voices like nails raking on a chalkboard, until they all muffled together like white noise in Eli's ringing ears.

"Aww look, he's crying," mocked Aaron after striking his knees one last time.

"What a sissy," Asher spat, finally letting him go. Barely able to stand on his own swaying legs, Eli couldn't even hear their put-downs anymore. His heart was thumping too loud in his chest, his head was pounding, the trees in the woods were spinning in his vision, and the tears were burning his eyes as they started pouring down his cheeks. He registered their laughter, however. And then, suddenly, David dumped something over his head, something cold and slimy.

Eli fell to his knees and instinctively gripped at his hair, recoiling with a shriek when his fingers touched the slimy substance, which he couldn't even recognize at that moment was leftover sloppy-joe meat from the mess hall. He curled into himself on the hard ground, then rolled over onto his stomach and buried his face in his arms in the dirt. It was too much, he couldn't handle it. Hysterical cries tore from his throat, finally releasing a sound that was too little, too late to have saved him from being ganged up on.

His screaming sobs got the other boys to finally leave, as they rushed back towards the cabin as lightning-quick as their feet could carry them, in case any camp counselors were drawn to the scene by the noise and found out what they had done. "Better keep your mouth shut, Eli. Snitches get stitches!" Jacob threatened before he darted. Eli didn't hear him, didn't notice them run, he couldn't concentrate on anything other than how much everything _hurt_.

He had no idea how long he was lying there in the woods crying, his whole frame shivering. Eli just kept going until his body gave up. Choking down a sniffle, he suddenly felt nauseous, like he wanted to throw up. It required all his remaining energy to snake his hand into the front pocket of his hoodie and shakily pull his iPhone out, dropping it on the ground by where his head laid on his other arm. It took even longer for his trembling fingers to put in the password and fumble with the display to find the number he wanted from his contacts.

Pressing the speaker button, Eli listened to the phone dialing, hoping they wouldn't already be asleep. Thankfully, someone picked up. "Hello?" It was his father. "Eli, is that you?" Eli only could sniffle in response as he tried to form words, but the painful lump stuck in his throat made it feel like he really was going to throw up. "Eli?"

"What's wrong?" came another voice. His mother's.

"The ID says it's Eli's number," explained his dad, "but I'm not hearing anything but background noise. Maybe he pocket-dialed."

His mom must've taken hold of the landline because Eli heard her voice more clearly on the speaker. "Eli? Eli? Honey, are you alright?"

Fresh tears pooled in his eyes. And at last his voice cracked, and Eli sobbed into the phone, "M-Mom? M-Mom, I w-wanna go home…."


	14. Alexithymia

Eli knew what stress was. School could be its own classification. There, stress was: homework; it was long lectures that droned on forever, and pop-quizes that threw routines out the window; it was loud bells ringing on the intercom, and bright fluorescent lights that gave him headaches; it was getting changed for gym class in the bathroom stalls, and all the racket and mayhem of a school cafeteria; it was teachers giving him empty encouragement in one breath, and then suggesting he wasn't trying hard enough with another; it was one kid pinching him in class when the teacher wasn't looking, and another pushing him in the hallway and pretending it wasn't done on purpose; it was feeling eyes on him constantly, and self-consciously hovering his hand over his mouth in hopes that it would make it stop; it was every time his ears heard laughter from the corner, and wondering if he was the butt of someone's joke.

Hawk knew stress, too, but refused to admit it. Because Cobra Kai was supposed to be his safe space, even safer than home, the place he could go to get away from all that shit. Besides, he wasn't a pussy, he refused to let anything get to him: the pressure he felt to never show up to the dojo without his mohawk perfectly styled, in case Sensei would call him names again; the pressure of rarely being able to place Sensei's emotions, since the man had a pissed-off expression on his face ninety-nine percent of the time; the pressure of always scrambling his mind for the right script whenever his friends asked him something, just so he wouldn't risk sounding like a dork; the pressure to not be weird, to not be a walking joke, to instead become a badass, someone to be feared; the pressure to just be Hawk at all.

When stress got too much for Eli to handle, he'd seek some small way to escape from it, all of those overwhelming sensations. Sometimes that meant hiding in the library and shutting his eyes to block everything out. Other times, it meant withdrawing into himself, dissociating in class, but then risking horrible embarrassment when the teacher called on him and not knowing anything they'd just said. Other times still, it was the frantic frame of mind that moved his feet to the nearest bathroom, so he could escape and have a minor meltdown in private, where at least no one could see him cry.

Hawk was too tough for that. He pushed right through it, just like Sensei taught him, he beat down his anxiety with a cocky veneer that let others know he wasn't that sissy pushover anymore. It almost became easy for him to miss that the stress kept building, drop by drop in the bucket, where it went sour and morphed inside him into a curdling rage, into an inner fury that was burning hot to the touch.

So while Hawk refused to acknowledge that stress existed, he did know rage. As time started to pass, he came to know it very well.

It was the slight rise in his blood pressure whenever his reflecting mind would exhume a memory of a time he'd been terrorized by some bully, and how he suddenly would find himself hyper-fixated on it. Dark thoughts would cloud his senses then with fantasies about how he would have handled things differently if he had been fearless, confident Hawk back then, instead of nerdy, soft Eli. Hawk daydreamed about smashing his knuckles into those people's faces, he pictured himself distributing justice with his own two fists and pounding his past enemies into the dirt. And he smiled when he thought about their bloody faces looking up at him, where he would then ask them, "Who's laughing now?"

It was the tunnel vision that overcame him over what probably looked like seemingly minor infractions to people watching from the outside. Maybe that was why Sensei had gotten so mad about him attacking Robby Keene from behind. Sensei just didn't understand. He hadn't felt how Hawk's muscles had tensed when Robby called his haircut stupid, he hadn't known what that meant. He couldn't possibly comprehend why that would be a source of actual physical pain for him, why Hawk would feel the sudden need to unleash his rage and strike his enemy down hard into submission.

It was the lull between outbreaks, when everything must have looked calm on the surface to everyone else. They didn't know the pressure kept boiling inside Hawk all the time as classes continued on as normal over the summer. They couldn't see it until it exploded visibly. Was that the reason why Moon dumped him for attacking Demetri at the mall? Because, to her, it must have seemed like it had come out of nowhere. She couldn't see the dots that connected the line of events. And he lacked the ability to properly articulate them. He wasn't a good talker, especially when it came to describing his emotions, he never was. So when he tried explaining the anguished fury he'd felt when reading Demetri's Yelp review, and how the pang of betrayal had hit him like a wrecking ball when his friend said he'd enlisted with the rival dojo, all that came out was, "He joined Miyagi-Do." He'd expected Moon to understand what he meant by that. She didn't.

It was the anger on top of the already simmering anger he felt when releasing his fury only brought temporary relief. It was the confusion that stuttered his mind both when vandalizing Miyagi-Do and stealing their medal of honor didn't bring him the happiness he had been expecting, and when Miguel got frustrated with him for those very actions. And, once again, he couldn't make Miguel understand why he'd done it; because he himself could barely understand why. They were the enemy. They had to be put in their place. That was reason enough.

Eli had never considered himself a particularly violent person. He'd been taught by his parents and his teachers that anger was a bad emotion. Sensei was the first one who vindicated his rage; at least, until he suddenly didn't, why did things have to be so fucking confusing? Sometimes his own fury even scared him, while other times Hawk became excited by it, like he was suddenly itching for a fight so he could let it out; he wanted to bruise, he wanted to bleed, he wanted to feel pain, even though pain did not exist. As long as he could control it. Either way, there was a dissonance between the him he knew and the boy all the others saw.

Part of Eli hoped that maybe someone would take notice of his situation. His friends were often increasingly confused by his behavior, but they couldn't comprehend the reasons behind it. It felt like Sensei didn't care at all. The only people who suspected something was wrong were his parents. And they were the last people Hawk could unload on, they would pull him from Cobra Kai in a second if they suspected it was the cause of his problems. Hawk couldn't let that happen.

In the mean time, the pressure sores in his overheated brain kept getting worse. And Hawk had the arrogance to keep believing he was immune to stress, because he could no longer recognize it for what it was.


	15. Lunar

"Do you think this would look good on me?" asked Moon. Standing there in the middle of the young women's section at the Macy's, she held a flowery purple blouse up to her person, glancing down as she did so to get an image in her mind of what she looked like in the shirt without a mirror nearby to show her.

Standing beside her, arms crossed and leaning against a shelf of folded jeans, Hawk arched an eyebrow at her inquiry. Was this a trick question, he wondered? In his experience, absolutely nobody ever wanted an honest answer whenever they asked a question like that. They were just looking for affirmation. If they wanted that, they should just say so. Because, honestly, he didn't think Moon would look good in that blouse. It was the wrong color for her. He knew it would be interpreted as callous if he said that, however. So he jutted his chin out to the shirt it had been hanging beside and said, "You look better in orange."

Was that the wrong thing to say? Moon was biting her bottom lip and sheepishly putting the blouse back on the rack, not even looking at the shirt he had pointed out. Hawk mentally kicked himself. He hadn't meant to hurt her feelings. This wasn't his sort of thing, though. For him, clothes shopping was straight-forward. You knew what you wanted, you went in, you got it, and you left. With girls, everything was a minefield when it came to what should've been a simple task.

He didn't even know why Moon would ask for his help. This was what chicks' girlfriends were for. Yeah, Yasmine had recently left for France, but Moon could've asked Aisha instead. Aisha was always talking about how she wished she had more girls to go out with, since she was the only one in Cobra Kai.

The only things Moon ended up purchasing from the store were a pair of earrings and a couple of headbands. As they left the Macy's, she reached down her hand and locked her fingers with his. Good, at least she wasn't upset about his comment, thought Hawk. "You want to get something to eat at the food court soon?" she asked while they walked the mall.

"Sure," he answered with a small smile. "I could stand to eat. You like Panda Express?" Orange chicken sounded good right then.

Moon grimaced slightly. "They don't have any vegan options," she pointed out.

"Oh. Right." Sometimes Hawk forgot about that. He'd never really paid any attention to vegan options on any menus, so he didn't know what Moon could eat anywhere, besides a place that offered a side-salad or something.

Thankfully, Moon had an alternative in mind. "The burger place has a black bean patty," she said. "And I already know they don't cook them on the same grill with the beef patties. We could both get what we want there."

"Sounds like a date, babe," Hawk said, his smile widening at her suggestion. He appreciated that at least she didn't try changing his dietary habits to match her own. He never could have given up eating meat, even if he wanted to. But he could meet her half-way. "Did I ever tell you that my Manic Panic hair-dye is vegan and cruelty-free?" he boasted.

The dimples on Moon's cheeks deepened as she grinned. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. I read it on the label," bragged Hawk. "Y'know, just doing my small part, making sure no animals were harmed in making my hair look this good." He liked the way she giggled at that.

They kept walking, and Moon's eyebrows raised on her forehead when she spotted the Yankee Candle store. "Oh, let's go in there first," she said, reaching into her purse to retrieve her phone. "I got a BOGO half-off coupon, and they put out their summer fragrances recently. I _love_ their 'MidSummer's Night' scent!" She looked at Hawk and playfully added, "They're also vegan-friendly."

She gave a little tug on his hand, but Hawk's feet planted themselves on the floor. He couldn't go in that store. He'd already felt the pang of a headache when they had walked past the perfume section at Macy's, but Hawk knew if he stepped into Yankee Candle, it would be an instant sinus migraine. An individual scented candle was one thing, but a whole store full of them? Completely unbearable, he'd be lucky if he didn't throw up. No way he could be that weak in front of his girl. What kind of loser would he look like then?

So, seeing the look Moon was giving him, he lied, "I gotta make a call, actually. Go in and do your thing. I'll be right out here." She must not have suspected anything weird, because Moon went in to do her shopping.

Sitting down on a nearby bench, Hawk pulled out his phone and checked his texts. Ignoring a message from Demetri, he saw Miguel had also left him one: _hey you up for a flick?_

Hawk texted him back: _out with moon right now but i'll let you know later_

Miguel must've had his phone on him, since he immediately responded: _lol i got you ;)_

Smirking, Hawk embellished: _lol she can't keep her hands off me. must be the hawkridge body spray. she got kissed on the beak of this man power_

Miguel texted: _lmao i can't with you man. aight let me know about the movie tho_

He put his phone back in his pocket as Moon stepped out of Yankee Candle, holding the bag with her purchase in her hand. She held it up and called out, "Back. I also got their 'Beach Walk' fragrance. You won't believe how good it smells."

As she said that, a high school senior walking by wolf-whistled and told her, "I'd like to know how _you_ smell, sweetcheeks."

Hawk flew up from his bench in a hot second and almost launched himself at the guy. _Strike first_, his mind told him. But Moon stepped in his path, putting her hands on his chest to restrain him. "Hawk, don't!" she said emphatically. His face hardened, however, at hearing the laugh the other guy threw at his attempts to come to Moon's aid. Narrowing his eyes, Hawk's arms shook by his sides at hearing that mocking laughter, and his fists curled tighter. But with his girlfriend holding him back, he had no choice but to watch as the goon walked off, getting away with his comment.

The crisis having passed, Moon reached down and tried to wrap a hand around one of Hawk's fists, but he pulled his hand away, suddenly not wanting to be touched, incensed as he was. Hawk was confused. Another guy had insulted his girl. Everything Sensei Lawrence had taught him told him he needed to show that asshole that_ he_ was the alpha. Why had Moon stopped him? Did she think Hawk would seriously lose in a fight against that piece of shit? Was this just her being a hippy again? Why wouldn't she let him defend her? What was the point of his karate lessons if he couldn't even protect her?

She must have noticed his confusion. Brushing her hair behind her shoulder, Moon said, "Listen, it's not the first time something like that has happened," she told him, her cheeks red with lingering embarrassment. "It probably won't be the last. But you can't just go around fighting every guy who cat-calls me, okay?" Hawk didn't see why not. "Don't worry, I can handle it."

Shaking his head in doubt, Hawk took a fuming breath and frowned. He thought she would be happy that he'd come to her defense. This really must have been part of her hippy outlook. She was all about those non-violent responses, to pretty much anything it looked like. Hawk couldn't understand that. Didn't she know that passivity would never make their enemies stop? Sometimes you had to fight back. And if it happened again within his earshot, he would fight, no matter what Moon said.

Wanting to put the whole thing behind her, Moon smiled again and said, "Well, I'm ready to eat if you are."

"Yeah, sure," Hawk said, rolling the tension from his shoulders.


	16. Riddle

"Cobra Kai is about being badass," explained Sensei Lawrence to his class, his voice vexed and full of boiling frustration, "and the baddest badass is the one who beats his opponent when he's at his strongest." He got in Hawk's face and shouted, "Not when his back is turned!" He took a step to his left and then snapped at Miguel next. "Not when he's injured!" Addressing the whole group, he asked pointedly, "Is that understood?"

"Yes, Sensei!" the students answered in unison.

"From here on out, those are pussy moves," continued Sensei Lawrence, sternly pacing back to the front of the lines, "and you don't wanna be pussies, do you?" Miguel and Hawk gave each other a puzzled look, both caught completely off guard by their Sensei's anger. They had never seen him so mad. It was the last thing they had expected the day after Cobra Kai had won the championship. They had thought their teacher would be thrilled. He hadn't given any indication the previous day that he'd been upset with their actions during the tournament. His reaction was blindsiding them, like a semi-trailer crashing into them out of nowhere on the highway.

The class responded again, "No, Sensei!"

Sensei Lawrence gave a little nod. "Good. It's why I had you wear white belts, we're starting over." Giving another glance to the two boys he'd just finished thoroughly chewing out for their behavior at the All-Valley Tournament, he barked, "Diaz! Hawk! Fifty pushups on your knuckles! Miss Robinson, warm them up."

Everyone did as they were instructed, while Sensei Lawrence trudged into his adjoining office. Hawk dropped down on the mat beside Miguel, and they both commenced carrying out their punishment. That was what it was: punishment; humiliation; a total blow to their prides. And for what? Doing exactly what their Sensei had taught them to do? Why did that warrant being called a couple of pussies? Especially in front of everyone else?

That's what Hawk wanted to know. He couldn't believe it, he just couldn't believe all of that had just happened. What had he and Miguel done wrong? And if they had somehow misunderstood Sensei, if they hadn't totally comprehended the meaning of those black words on the white wall - Strike First, Strike Hard, No Mercy - then why didn't Sensei just pull them aside and tell them in private? Did everyone just secretly enjoy embarrassing him in public?

_seven…eight…nine…ten…._

Pushing himself up on his knuckles for the eleventh time, Hawk replayed Sensei Lawrence's question in his head again, hoping he could find the clue for where he had gone astray. Two cobras in the jungle. One kills a lion, the other kills an injured monkey. Which cobra was it better to be? That was the riddle.

_nineteen…twenty…twenty-one…twenty-two…._

Aisha had said it was better to be the cobra that killed the lion, because the lion was the stronger predator. The bigger the opponent, the more badass the snake. Obviously that must have been the correct answer, since that was what Sensei Lawrence had agreed with and praised Aisha for saying. But Hawk didn't see why the answer was so glaringly obvious. Why was that the better choice in that scenario?

Why would a cobra ever attack a lion? Hawk racked his brain, but couldn't think of a good reason. They wouldn't ever fight over resources. A lion was much too big to eat. No cobra was large enough to swallow a lion whole; not even the biggest one, the king cobra, which only ate other snakes anyway. And a lion was too massive a predator for a cobra to waste venom defending against, if it was the lion that attacked first. A smart cobra would slither away from the lion, wouldn't it? An intelligent cobra would never take on an enemy it had no chance of winning against, would it?

_thirty-five…thirty-six…thirty-seven…thirty-eight…._

The cobra that killed the injured monkey, though? That was the smarter snake, in Hawk's opinion. Cobras were opportunistic hunters. If a cobra was hungry and saw a little injured monkey lying on the ground, why wouldn't it go for easy prey? It reduced the risk of harm for the cobra, which was most important to the animal's survival.

Besides, unlike the lion, the monkey would have had a healthy fear of the cobra, it would've known to otherwise stay away. Eli had once read in an article that primates had innate fear of serpents, it had been observed by scientists many times across various species. They thought snakes probably played a big role in primate evolution, for that very reason. Monkeys knew to keep a distance based on instinct. They warned other monkeys whenever they spotted a snake from the trees. They knew how dangerous cobras were.

_forty-six…forty-seven…forty-eight…forty-nine…._

So wouldn't it be better to be the cobra that killed the injured monkey? It would have faced an enemy that at least knew and respected its power, and it only would have attacked the monkey for an easy meal; at least the prey wouldn't go to waste. The cobra that attacked the lion? It probably would've been eaten by the lion, in all honesty. The lion didn't fear the snake at all. So what was so badass about taking down something that never saw you as a threat in the first place?

And what did any of this have to do with Hawk attacking Robby when his back was turned? Whether it was facing a lion or an injured monkey, what did a cobra care where it bit, as long as it could sink its fangs into its enemy?

Picking himself off the floor after he finished his final pushup, and wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm, Hawk looked over at Miguel as he walked over to Sensei Lawrence's office. He must have been just as confused about Sensei's blow up as Hawk was. Eli thought about following his friend in there, to ask for some clarification, because he was totally at a loss as to what Sensei's point had been. Maybe he could explain it more clearly to him.

But then Hawk decided against it. If he brought up his points to Sensei Lawrence about the two cobras, his teacher would probably just call him a smartass or an idiot or something like that, and then yell at him some more. And Hawk felt stupid enough as it was, he didn't want Sensei to be even angrier at him. So, instead, he just continued with the warmup drill, listening to Aisha as she had them all practicing front punches.

Whatever. If Sensei Lawrence said the answer was the lion, then it was the lion. And since it would take an unbelievable amount of venom for a cobra to take down a lion, Hawk figured whenever he faced the lion, he would just have to bite as viciously and persistently as possible to bring such a formidable enemy down. If that was what it took to be badass.

Which cobra did he wanna be?

Whichever cobra survived to see another day.


	17. Bubbe

It wasn't truly Passover at the Moskowitz residence until Hawk's grandmother, Esther Moskowitz, flew in from her retirement community in Florida. So things got lively as soon as his dad arrived back home that day after picking her up from the airport. Esther came through the door, dressed in her very 1970s-style clothes, setting down the bottles of kosher wine they'd picked up on the counter before zeroing in on her grandson sitting at the nearby kitchen table. "There's my favorite einikel!" she exclaimed, planting a kiss on both of Eli's cheeks.

Standing up from his chair, he grinned and reminded her, "I'm your only grandkid."

His Bubbe patted him affectionately on his right cheek, telling him, "Yes, but you're still my favorite." She then pushed her big sunglasses on top of her head, and her eyes drifted up to his blue mohawk. "Oh my goodness, with that hair!"

"Do you like it?" asked Hawk excitedly. "I'm trying a new look. What do you think?" His parents may have been a bit apprehensive at first when he'd shown them his hairstyle before they came around to it, but he figured if anyone would appreciate his mohawk, it would be his grandmother. She had always been eccentric, according to his dad, she was a woman who did her own thing and didn't care who said what about it.

"Does it make you happy?" asked his grandmother. When Hawk nodded, Esther pressed her lips together in a warm smile. "Then I love it!" Raising her eyebrows, she then leaned forward and asked him half-jokingly, half-worriedly, "You didn't join a gang, though, did you?"

Hawk evaded the hand she reached up to touch his hair with and laughed a little under his breath. "No, Bubbe, but I did join a karate dojo. It's called Cobra Kai. It's so cool, maybe I can show you what I've learned later. I've made a lot of new friends there."

His grandmother looked over at his parents, flabbergasted. "And when did all of this happen? Nobody tells me anything! My grandson shaves half his head and takes up a sport, and nothing? No messages? What happened between Purim and now for all of this change?"

Simon Moskowitz leaned against the counter beside his wife and told his mother, "We tagged you on a Facebook post about it."

Esther shook her head. "Oh, that thing! I haven't been able to open that for over a month, it keeps crashing on that smart phone you made me get." Suddenly, Hawk wanted so badly to get his grandmother and his Sensei in the same room together and see which one of them would be the most clueless with modern technology. He had a feeling his Sensei would come out the winner; or in this case, would it be the loser? At least his Bubbe actually had a smart phone. Sensei was still whipping out a flip phone, like it was 2005 or something.

"Maybe Eli could fix it for you," his dad voluntold on his behalf.

Still scrutinizing the mohawk, Esther asked her grandson, "Do you plan on styling it like that tomorrow night? How are you gonna wear your kippah with it up like that?"

"Oh, I already figured it out," said Hawk, taking a couple steps over to the adjacent table, where his parents had already laid out copies of the Haggadah, as well as his and his dad's kippot. Taking his own, Hawk maneuvered it to the back right side of his head and secured it with the hairpins. "See?" he said, turning to the side to show his handiwork. It still counted, and it made his Bubbe grin.

While Eli put his kippah back away, Ruth continued with the holiday preparation, elbow-deep in food mixing, and asked her mother-in-law, "How was your flight? We heard about the delay in Chicago, the layover wasn't too bad, was it?" She missed the subtle swift cutting motion her husband gave her with his hand as a warning to not bring that up.

"Don't get me started!" said Esther. What commenced was a solid fifteen-minute tirade about how she'd been forced to sit down next to a couple of women who did nothing but kvetch throughout the whole layover. And the only thing that kept the rant that short was her spotting Hawk's mother pulling out a bag of rice from the kitchen cabinet. "Already with the kitniyot?!" she suddenly called out.

"And so it begins," sighed Simon Moskowitz, pushing his glasses up his nose. Hawk just smirked, amused. Passover at their home was held in the Sephardic tradition, according to his mother's customs, it had been for as long as Eli could remember. And his very Ashkenazic, very set-in-her-ways grandmother always had an opinion about that. He knew the next few days were going to involve a lot of heated words exchanged between his mom and Bubbe, that would end with them not speaking for a few weeks to follow. It was family tradition by that point. Those people at the airport weren't the only ones who liked to kvetch.

His Bubbe kept going. "I swear, you do it on purpose, just to kill my nerves, to send me to an early grave!" she told Ruth, who just listened with a tiny smile on her face; Hawk suspected his mother did it to deliberately provoke her. "I just landed not one hour ago, and already you're driving me meshuga." Sometimes Eli wondered if his grandmother didn't lay into the Yiddish a little too thickly on purpose, just so she could completely immerse herself in the role of a bubbe so thoroughly. But Hawk liked it, because sometimes she taught him Yiddish profanity.

His father intervened, suggesting, "Mom, why don't you go ahead and take Eli into the living room so he can fix your Facebook app? You two can get caught up on things." It was probably the only thing that could have convinced Esther to cease her outburst, as she wasted no time taking him up on that offer. As soon as the two left to the living room, Simon looked at Ruth and shook his head with an innocent shrug. "Every year."

"Every year," his wife affirmed, walking over to wash her hands in the sink.

Meanwhile, Hawk sat on the couch, messing with his grandmother's phone. He quickly assessed that all he'd have to do to fix the problem was just uninstall and reinstall the Facebook app, simple enough. As he went about doing that, his Bubbe was telling him a story about how she and her friends in her retirement community had set up a poker league. "And I told Leah, 'sweetie, you always pay the vigorish,' and took my share of the winnings," she said, leaning back on the couch beside him. "I told her, 'you gotta pay the vig.' I was the one who set up the league, the one who taught her how to play, it's only fair I get my dues."

"You guys don't bet a lot in those games, do you?" asked Hawk, raising his eyebrows and smiling over at her.

"Oh, we don't bet with real money, honey, we only gamble with smokes," his Bubbe assured him. With a grin, she nudged him with her elbow playfully and winked. "Don't tell your father, I still haven't given up the habit. Our little secret."


	18. Bite

Eli used to really like dogs. As a kid, he had always wished he'd been allowed to have one as a pet. Maybe a labrador or retriever. Something about the idea of having a companion that depended on him entirely and would love him loyally and unconditionally appealed greatly to him. However, his dad was very allergic to animal dander, and didn't want to get a monthly shot for it, so such an option had never been on the table; the closest thing he ever got was a goldfish. But any time Eli had been able to interact with a dog, he did. He loved petting them, he enjoyed the simplicity of their displays of happiness, how their tails would wag wildly while they licked his hand.

He used to like dogs. Now Hawk wasn't so sure about them.

Sensei Lawrence had finished handing out bits of beef jerky to his students, telling them, "You want to win, you gotta be hungry. You guys hungry?"

"Yes, Sensei!" they all answered, some of them eating the dried meat they'd been given without a second thought, assuming their Sensei was just passing out snacks as a reward for their hard work that day in the junkyard. They probably should have suspected something was off at that point; when had Sensei ever passed out snacks before?

A cocksure grin curled on the edges of his mouth as Johnny bit into a piece of the jerky himself. "Good. So are they," he said ominously, before blowing into a dog whistle. A moment's confusion crossed the kids' faces up until they heard the echoed barking coming from around some of the junk in the scrapyard. Then they saw them, two large, ravenous dogs darting out and hurtling right towards them. All of the kids immediately scurried off, as fast as their feet could carry them.

"Don't be afraid! They smell fear!" From where he stood to the side, watching the chaos he'd created with a smirk on his face, Sensei Lawrence saw the students scramble in every which direction to get out of the paths of the angry dogs. He spotted Aisha darting away to hide behind a pair of old rusty cars, packing herself tightly between them so the dogs would have no space to reach her. Miguel and Bert both jumped on top of a couple of the busted vehicles to get out of the reach of the barking canines before they could get bitten.

Johnny couldn't help but swell with a bit of pride, impressed by their quick thinking and fast reflexes in the face of fear. They were getting better. Maybe they would have a real shot at placing in the All-Valley Tournament after all, if they kept improving at this rate.

But then he heard a shriek, and when Sensei Lawrence followed the noise, he saw Hawk's last desperate efforts to climb on top of a car fail before one of the dogs jumped on him and bit down hard on his posterior. Johnny cringed a little, watching uneasily the next few seconds as the attack transpired in front of him.

Hawk screamed when he felt the dog's sharp teeth puncture through his jeans and break the skin underneath. He heard the canine's horrible snarling as it pulled and tugged him to the ground, and Eli tried to scramble away from the animal, but it kept its firm hold and ripped into him. Instinctively, he reached around with his right hand and did his best to push the dog off, but then it just launched itself on top of him, wrapping its jaws around the arm that had tried shoving it away, knocking Hawk on his back with its paws. All Eli could do was stick out his left hand to protect his face, crying out while the dog continued to maul into his right arm.

The whole thing didn't last longer than a minute before Sensei Lawrence ran over and tried to put a stop to it. He blew on the dog whistle in his hand and wagged a piece of jerky with the other, getting the dog's attention away from Hawk. He tossed the meat far to the side, so the mutt would stop attacking the kid.

He'd never expected the dogs to actually nab one of them, he'd just wanted to give them a good hearty scare to test their agility. A twinge of guilt tugged at him, making him uneasy. He hadn't meant for his any of his students to get hurt during this practice. Well, maybe a couple cuts, scrapes, or bruises from all the exposed glass and metal would build some character in them, but he didn't want to see any of them seriously injured.

At that moment, though, Johny couldn't focus on any feelings of regret for how he'd carried out his karate lesson. Right now, he just needed to keep the kid from going into hysterics.

Trying to sit up, Hawk winced with a groan when he felt how sore his ass was, and he could only imagine what the damage must have looked like; it certainly felt awful. He sniffed hard over and over, and bit down on his trembling bottom lip, trying to keep himself from crying. He could already feel the eyes of the other students all over as they looked across at him from their safe perches on the tops of the vehicles in the junkyard. Had Miguel seen what happened? Had Aisha?

Hawk sucked in a deep breath when his red-rimmed eyes fell on his shaking arm, at the pink raw flesh that was seeped with blood. His stomach clenched, and the color drained from his face. Oh God, he was bleeding. He could see the bite marks. This was nothing like the chipped tooth he'd suffered in class when Aisha had unflinched them. It truly sunk in. Holy shit, he'd been mauled! That dog had tried ripping him to pieces! Eli had to bite down on his lip harder to keep from shrieking again at the sight of the injury.

He almost didn't even notice his Sensei kneeling down on a knee beside him to make sure he was alright.

Grimacing at the wound on the kid's arm, Sensei Lawrence gave Hawk's shoulder a quick couple awkward pats and tried assuring him, "It's, uh, it's alright. It looks worse than it is, don't be a baby, okay? When you get home, just wash it off, take some Tylenol, and put some ice on it, you'll be good." Johnny hoped the kid wouldn't tell his parents how he came about those injuries, because he knew for a fact that his insurance wouldn't cover this. The last thing he needed after everything lately in his life was a lawsuit.

Even as upset as he was, Hawk was aware that ice wouldn't be enough. And there was no way to hide this. How was he possibly going to explain this to his parents? Eli knew if he told them the truth, they'd lose their minds. They'd probably call the police on Sensei Lawrence, charge him with negligence or assault or something. They'd definitely do everything in their power to keep Sensei from teaching karate again if they knew he'd gotten him hurt through sheer irresponsibility. And Hawk didn't want that, he didn't want to be the pansy dork responsible for getting Cobra Kai shut down. His friends would hate him.

So he thought of a lie. He'd been walking home from the dojo after practice had wrapped up, strolling down the streets of Reseda and minding his own business, when all of a sudden a random dog jumped out of the bushes and mauled him. Yeah. Yeah. That would work. His mom and dad would believe that. He'd always been a pretty honest kid, they'd have no reason to suspect he was lying.

God, he felt so embarrassed. The shame washing over Hawk as he let Sensei Lawrence help pull him back up on his shaky legs almost felt worse than the actual bleeding wounds themselves. The humiliation twisted at his gut so much, it almost made him sick. He limped away, self-consciously trying to position himself so none of the other students would see where the dog had bitten him on his posterior; what if they saw the Superman boxers he'd haphazardly thrown on that morning without thinking about it?

Why couldn't he have just gotten on top of the car like everyone else?

"Hey, man, you okay?" Miguel checked as he slid down off the truck he had climbed on to save himself from being attacked by the dogs, peering over to check out the scope of the damage. He winced in sympathy.

The last thing Hawk wanted was to look more like a idiot in front of Miguel. "Y-yeah," he stuttered, giving a small shrug of his shoulder, still holding his right arm close to him. "I-I'm fine. No big." Sensei Lawrence was right, he couldn't be a crybaby about this. He would just step out of the junkyard, walk down a few blocks, and then call his parents to tell them his cover story so they would come and pick him up. They would then take him to the doctor to get checked out, and the whole thing would eventually blow over.

He'd be fine.


	19. King

Leaning against the doorway of the dojo office, John Kreese studied Miguel and Hawk quietly as the two boys went about the third day straight of carrying out their punishment of cleaning the sweaty mats after class. His thick brows furrowed to the bridge of his nose, and he scrutinized them in stoney silence, arms crossed over his chest ominously, one hand tightly holding a cold bottle of Coors Banquet that he took a swig from every once in a while.

It still didn't sit right with him, what Cobra Kai had been shaped into under Johnny's tutelage. Not just over some of his questionable lessons, but also the look of the classes overall. Back when he had opened his first dojo to the public, Kreese never would have allowed in the students that Johnny now opened his doors to. But these were brand new times, and Kreese had to adapt.

People often didn't think he was capable of adapting, but John Kreese hadn't survived everything he did without being able to modify, reshape, acclimate, and manipulate. Didn't mean he had to like it, of course. But he wasn't the King Cobra for nothing. If Johnny thought he could simply take that title away from him, just because he was the Sensei now, he would discover whose venom was the deadliest between the two of them.

Johnny had better never forget that Kreese was Cobra Kai, and Cobra Kai would never exist without him in some shape or form. Cobra Kai never died.

The kid Kreese wanted most to see wearing the Cobra Kai colors was Johnny's boy, Robby Keene. He would have liked very much to teach the son of the man whom he considered to be the closest thing to a son he'd ever have. To carry on the legacy to the next generation. Besides, Robby had that original Cobra Kai material in him: he was strong, driven, all-American. But Johnny wouldn't lift a finger to get his own kid away from the influence of Daniel LaRusso. It wasn't right. The boy should've been with his father in Cobra Kai, not being corrupted by Miyagi-Do.

But Kreese was a patient man. He had spent decades brumating, after all. He could wait a little longer to get what he wanted.

In the meantime, since he was unable to train Keene, Kreese then thought about the influence he might have on the Hispanic kid, Diaz. He could see that clearly the boy had a lot of skills. A true pragmatist in his fighting style. He was the most promising one in the whole class, he wasn't the new All-Valley Champion for nothing. Johnny had taught him well, Kreese had to admit that. Maybe a little too well. Diaz had an unshakable loyalty towards Johnny, he was liable to follow that man right off a bridge. A possible problem for Kreese if he was going to keep Cobra Kai on track. Diaz would take some extra work, on his part.

His first and second choices out of his sway, that left the Jew kid with the harelip, Hawk.

Taking a swig from his beer bottle, John Kreese peered over his shoulder at Johnny, who sat in the chair at his desk, flipping through some paperwork while nursing his own drink. "That kid, Hawk," said Kreese, looking back over at the boys scrubbing the mats, "is it just me, or is he a…oh, what's the politically correct term for it these days?" A touch slow? A high-functioning half-wit? What the shrinks in the military used to call a Section Eight? "Is he, y'know, a little challenged in the head?"

Kreese had served with a few people like that, back during his tours in Vietnam. Project 100,000, it had been called; or McNamara's Morons, as they'd been nicknamed by the other soldiers. They never should have made it passed bootcamp. Kreese remembered one man was practically a mute, a man of very few words. Another fellow would freak out at the slightest provocation. One unfortunate guy had even been still a bedwetter, nobody wanted to bunk with him.

None of them had been fit for service. Oh, they had been pleasant enough, personality-wise. Nice fellows. They were so desperate for approval, so eager to please, those types. The perfect ones to send into the foxholes to check for landmines.

Johnny glanced up at his Sensei with a brief look of unease. "He's a little weird, but he can fight no problem," he said, tossing the stack of papers to the side before grabbing a nearby karate magazine. Somewhat defensively, he added, "I wouldn't let anyone stay in my dojo if they weren't badass."

Ah, so Johnny had no idea what he had on his plate, did he? Kreese suspected he didn't, from the way he disciplined the boy, from the way he so obviously missed the hostility he was fostering in Hawk. Sure, humiliation was part and parcel for training young soldiers, Kreese was totally behind that. After all, he'd taught Johnny all about discipline. But with those "special" ones, sometimes a bit of a mild touch every once in a while would yield much better results. Not soft, of course, there was nothing soft about Cobra Kai. Just a little encouragement, to keep them from wigging out.

"Was he the one who attacked your son from behind at the All-Valley Tournament?" asked Kreese smoothly, taking another deep drink from his beer. His probing eyes never left Hawk and Miguel. He simply kept watching, observing them as they joked with each other while they continued cleaning the mats.

He could hear the pages of the magazine being flipped behind him, but he did not turn around to see whatever look his old student must have been giving him. "Yeah," answered Johnny. "But I took care of it. He won't do anything that stupid again."

The corners of Kreese's hard mouth creased into a smile. Couldn't Johnny spot a ticking time-bomb when he saw one? Where was his vigilance? That was a mistake on his part. You didn't pull the pin out of a grenade and then drop it by your feet. You threw it at your enemy so it blew them up instead. Could Johnny not see that? Didn't Johnny know that you never pushed the challenged ones too far? Kreese knew he had never seen the shit of war, but hadn't he ever watched _Full Metal Jacket _at least?

"That's good, that's good," he replied plainly, finishing off his beer. He wiped his lips with the back of his arm slowly before turning back around to smirk at Johnny. "Those types you need to keep on a short leash. He'll thank you for it later." The King Cobra had a knack for seeking out and detecting a weak link. And Hawk was a weak link. Just the type of soldier he would need. At least until he could get to Diaz or Keene.


	20. Session

"I just want to assure you, Eli, you're not here because you're in trouble." Counselor Blatt leaned back comfortably in her chair to try and make the boy sitting across from her feel more relaxed. Eli continued to sit hunched over in the padded chair that was available for the students, eyes staring down at his hands in his lap, seemingly doing everything in his power to avoid looking at her. He looked like a bundle of stress and anxiety, the way his brows were creased, and his mouth was twisted in a wretched frown. So Counselor Blatt smiled and asked him warmly, "Do you understand why they had you come speak to me?" Eli gave a small nod. Counselor Blatt pressed further, "Can you tell me why, please?"

Eli sighed. He really didn't feel like talking, but he mumbled back, "I-I disrupted Mr. Combs's class."

Keeping the assuring smile on her face, Counselor Blatt expounded further, "Mr. Combs says you suddenly broke down crying when he asked you to read an exert from your writing assignment to the class." Eli didn't respond. He just kept his eyes on his twiddling thumbs. Counselor Blatt detected the way his cheeks blushed in embarrassment, however. Poor thing was probably mortified. "Can you tell me what made you cry?" she asked.

Eli just sank more into his seat and gave a shrug of his shoulders. What was he supposed to say? He cried because he was a crybaby; a softie; a wuss; a weenie; a pansy; a sissy. He hated how sensitive he was. He just wished he could grow a thicker skin, like all the other boys. They didn't let dumb shit get to them like he did.

When it became clear he wasn't going to answer, Counselor Blatt tried leading him more. "Were you sad about something?" All she got in response was more silence, more eye avoidance. Adjusting her glasses, she told him, "I would very much like to help you if you're feeling bad, Eli, but for me to do that I really need you to try talking with me, okay?"

The boy sitting across from her nodded. "Yeah."

But still, he didn't answer her question. Counselor Blatt pressed her lips together for a moment and tried to think of a way to get Eli to open up. "I know it states on your health record that you have autism," she stated, saying the word softly, almost like it was some disease he'd caught, "but I also hear that you're maintaining a strong B in English, so it's clear you're a bright boy, Eli. And I know public speaking can be pretty scary. Were you scared?" Why did it sound like she was speaking to him like he was eight instead of fourteen, Eli wondered?

He shook his head to her question. "No," Eli answered verbally. He wasn't scared. That wasn't the word for it. The whole situation had just been too much, that was the only way he could describe it. And his face heated some more, thinking about how he was going to have to go back to the class the next day. He would have rather buried himself in a hole. He remembered the looks on the other kids' faces. A couple girls looked at him with pity. Some of the other boys laughed at him. Most others just looked away, uncomfortable, whispering to each other and pointing at him, wondering what the hell his problem was.

"Then why did you cry?" Counselor Blatt asked him again.

Eli chewed on his bottom lip. The whole week had sucked, worse than usual. Demetri was still out with the flu; so, with his only friend sick, Eli had no one to talk or sit with at school. On Monday, he'd started the day off badly when he left his Algebra homework at home again, which upset Ms. Watanabe. Someone stole his favorite _Doctor Who_ pen, the one he'd gotten at the sci-fi con, in Ecology, he knew he hadn't misplaced it. Derrick pantsed him in the locker room after gym class, and Coach McGee didn't do anything about it.

Tuesday had been no better. A lot of the kids in World History were mad because Mr. Sanchez had announced that instead of the planned Christmas-themed party the next week before school let out for winter break, he had decided that it had to be a more inclusive, secular "Winter Holidays" party; and apparently the distinction must have been a big deal, for some reason. Brandon and Juan blamed him, Eli guessed because he was the only Jewish kid in class, even though he hadn't said anything about it to Mr. Sanchez; he didn't care either way about the stupid party. The two boys spent the whole period shooting spitballs in his hair.

Yesterday didn't let up either. A morning fire drill shot his nerves to pieces right off the bat. In Computer Science, Bryce kept messaging demeaning nicknames to him while they were supposed to be working on a project; he had two new ones: split-lip and rabbit-mouth. Kiki accused him of staring at her – he hadn't been, he'd just zoned out – and called him a weirdo. Kyler tripped him in the cafeteria, causing him to fall on top of his tray, where he got mashed potatoes and gravy all over his shirt, forcing him to wear his gym shirt the rest of the day; Kyler and his crew got a good chuckle out of that.

And now he'd just humiliated himself in Mr. Combs's English class. God, and it was only Thursday, he still had another day to go before this hell week was over with and he could get to relax in the sweet relief of the weekend. What would go wrong tomorrow? Maybe he could convince his parents to let him call out sick instead.

"Eli?" prodded Counselor Blatt.

They wouldn't leave him alone. All Eli wanted was for everyone to leave him alone. "People won't leave me alone," he admitted out loud to the counselor, vocalizing his thoughts. He finally looked up at her hesitantly, with a bit of hope in his eyes. "Can you make them?" he asked. She'd said she wanted to help him, and nothing in the world would have helped him more than if someone would finally get the other kids to stop.

Counselor Blatt's smile warmed again, glad she was finally able to get a reason out of the boy for his behavior. She'd had a suspicion that was what the whole thing had been about, since it was a fairly common problem at the school among the quiet kids, but she'd needed him to reach that conclusion himself and say it. "Sometimes other kids can say very cruel things," she said sympathetically. "I want you to understand that this school has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to bullying."

"So you can _make_ them stop?" asked Eli again, more forcefully.

Sensing at what Eli was hinting at, Counselor Blatt clarified, choosing her words carefully as she said, "If someone is bothering you, you should immediately tell a teacher, so proper actions will be taken." She watched the way the boy's shoulders slumped again, how his eyes fell back to his lap.

Eli should have known she'd be full of shit, too. She didn't mean what she said. Teachers were useless; counselors too, apparently. Did they think he was stupid? He'd already tried that, more than once. It didn't get the other kids to stop, and it definitely didn't save him from retaliation; he'd sported a black eye for a whole week one time as evidence to that fact, and after that he'd known never to name names again. It was all empty words. Nothing would make them stop.

Not wanting to lose his trust, Counselor Blatt tried another approach. "And while the school handles the problem, there are things you can do to make the teasing a little less hurtful for you. Why don't you try an exercise for me? Next time someone says something mean to you, think of a positive attribute about yourself." Eli didn't look back up at her. He just pinched his brows in doubt. "Try an example with me right now. Let's say someone just made fun of you for your, um, deformity. You would say to yourself, 'What they said was mean, but I know for a fact that I'm….'" She trailed off, giving Eli a chance to complete the sentence.

_A freak_, he wanted to say. But Eli remained quiet, keeping his eyes down, knowing he would get nothing of substance out of this forced counseling session. Just empty words, he thought to himself again.

Counselor Blatt's smile saddened at his silence. "You would say, 'But I know for a fact that I'm a very nice kid.'"


	21. Quitter

"I think I might have hurt Miguel's feelings." In the back row of their Computer Science class, Eli glanced up to see Demetri sit in the chair beside him. His friend was shaking his head while he turned on the monitor, before reaching into his backpack to pull out the USB drive with his school project on it. "Told him I'm quitting karate," Demetri clarified, slouching in his seat. "He took it pretty hard. You'd think I'd told him I bludgeoned his puppy or something; if he had a dog, that is."

"You're really quitting?" asked Eli. He could not say the news surprised him. He'd been more shocked when Demetri had finally agreed they could give it a shot in the first place, after seeing for themselves what Miguel had become capable of since joining Cobra Kai; their friend had come a long way since getting thrashed at the Halloween dance.

Demetri's mouth twisted; he looked at Eli like he was nuts to ask such a question. "Uh, yeah. You were there, weren't you? You saw his crazy teacher assault me." Redness spread over his cheeks, a sign of either humiliation or vexation; perhaps both. Eli knew it had to have been embarrassing, getting thrown to the mats in front of everyone.

But Eli didn't remark on that. "Sensei," he corrected instead, his voice a murmur, recalling Aisha's insistence on the precise terminology the day before.

Rolling his eyes, Demetri said, "Okay, you saw his crazy _Sensei_ assault me. I told Miguel, I'm not about that hooker life; although I doubt even real hookers would defend their pimps with as much gusto as Miguel does that guy. My life might not be that much more glamorous, but at least I have enough self-respect to not want to be tossed around like that, much less pay somebody to do it."

Eli let out a soft sigh and slumped his shoulders, but he made no comment. He simply watched as Demetri inserted his USB drive into his computer and opened his coding documents on the monitor, while more and more students walked into the classroom, filling the other seats. Picking at his thumbnail, a thought flickered through Eli's mind, and he wondered if perhaps he could talk Demetri out of his decision.

But, as though his friend had read his mind and cut him off to the chase, Demetri shrugged with finality and concluded, "Well, now nobody can say we didn't give it a shot, right?"

Eli blinked up at him. "We?"

"Yeah, I know Miguel was pushing real hard for us to become part of his karate cult and all," said Demetri, "but you know what they say about running Windows on a Mac. I mean, I'm glad he's found a hobby he's good at, but I think I'll stick to finding other extracurricular activities to add to my college resume. Ones that don't involve full-contact sports. Besides, like I told Miguel, with him around, we don't even need to take karate classes."

The meaning behind his words was clear. Demetri assumed Eli was quitting right along with him. They hadn't ever talked about that.

"Actually," said Eli, glancing down at his keyboard, "I was thinking maybe about going back to the dojo today."

Demetri's expression went sour, like he just sucked hard on a lemon. "Why?" he inquired, dark eyebrows raising on his forehead. "I just told you, we don't have to get involved with this fighting business; I, personally, don't ever plan on getting in a fight again outside of an MMORPG. And you don't have to worry about Kyler, he's not gonna bother us anymore so long as Miguel's hanging with us. Think of him as our personal bodyguard. He gets to kick people's asses, and meanwhile we don't have to get our asses kicked. It's a win-win for everybody."

His friend may have had a point, but Eli couldn't get Miguel's beatdown of Kyler and his crew out of his mind. He must have watched that uploaded video on YouTube over fifty times. Miguel made it look so effortless, the way he knocked those other boys around in the cafeteria, thoroughly owning them in a way nobody else previously ever could. Eli had never seen anything like it. And he couldn't help but wonder if maybe, one day, he could do something amazing like that.

So, against his better inclination, he spoke up and argued with Demetri over it. "But what about when Miguel's not around?" They couldn't realistically expect Miguel to always be there to protect them, could they?

"Then we do what we've always done: run away," answered Demetri, his tone carrying its usual cynical tenor. "Can't go wrong with a tried-and-true method like that."

Did Demetri always have to be so defeatist? Wasn't he tired of running yet? And what about when running away didn't work? Should they persist in taking their licks without putting up any resistance at all? Demetri's method had always been one of either avoidance or just letting their bullies have their way and getting it over with, but could they really keep doing that forever? If Miguel could fight back, couldn't they?

"I think maybe we should give Sensei Lawrence another chance," Eli suggested under his breath. He understood why Demetri would be upset about Sensei Lawrence tossing him around, but it was a dojo, right? People got thrown around in dojos. Wasn't it part of the process of making them tough? "Maybe we should hear some more of what he has to say first, before quitting."

"Eli, Mr. Lawrence is an asshole!" emphasized Demetri, typing on his keyboard a little too loud. He sounded betrayed, judging by the edge to his voice. "Don't listen to him. You don't have to put up with him making fun of you or take an elbow to the teeth. Can't believe I have to say this, but you ever think maybe you shouldn't be taking the advice of a Gen-Xer who enjoys picking on kids?"

"But maybe he wasn't entirely wrong…."

"Oh yeah, that guy sure is spouting some real wisdom, he's a regular Obi-Wan Kenobi," said Demetri, sarcasm dripping from every word. "Did you like his witty nickname? Don't you get enough of that abuse here? Do you really want to pay a douchebag to dish it out after school, too?"

Eli bowed his head, and his shoulders hunched even more. He ought to have known it would be a mistake to argue. He should've just bent to Demetri's opinion, like he always did.

But then Eli thought again about the cafeteria fight, about how Miguel had changed so much over the past few months. Miguel's confidence had skyrocketed. He was making new friends. He had respect from theirs peers. He even had the self-assurance necessary to try and get a girlfriend. Eli wanted all of that that, too. Sensei Lawrence must have been a good influence if he could make Miguel that strong. Maybe he wasn't that bad, once someone got used to him. Maybe he would stop with the nicknaming if Eli just asked. Miguel had nothing but glowing things to say about the man, after all.

Looking beside him, Demetri's brow softened some, and a small smile curled at the corners of his mouth. "C'mon, let's just put this whole thing behind us. Wanna head out to the mall after school, maybe hit up the comic book store?"

If he listened to Demetri, he'd never achieve what Miguel had, would he? Didn't Demetri want to be strong, too? Didn't he want the bullying to stop? Miguel had given them the solution. All they had to do was take it. They'd tried everything else. What more did they possibly have to lose?

So Eli shook his head to the invitation, which made his friend sigh. Demetri must have known what that meant. He narrowed his eyes and pressed his lips in a tight frown, giving Eli a look that suggested he was about to make a huge mistake. But he said nothing more as the final bell rang and the teacher began her lesson.


	22. Shame

Hawk flipped on the light switch with his elbow before carrying the bundle in his hands over to the washing machine. A scowl marred his face, complimenting the dark bags under his eyes he'd earned by being woken up at four in the morning. He stuffed the soiled bedding and clothes into the washer, remembering at the last moment to throw in a Tide Pod before slamming the lid closed, not caring if he woke up the whole house by doing so.

He started up the machine, flicked the lights off, and trudged out of the laundry room, up the stairs, and back into the kitchen. Grabbing a cup from the cabinet, he then opened the fridge. His eyes squinted at the sudden assault of brightness in his face, but he reached inside and grabbed the jug of milk with an irate sigh.

"You know you shouldn't be drinking before getting back into bed."

Hawk turned around and glanced across the room at his father, who stood by the table. He looked exhausted, with what little could be made out by the illuminated fridge bulb, and Hawk felt a brief pang of guilt for knowing he had disturbed his parent's sleep with the noise he'd made.

But rather than make an apology, what came out of his mouth was, "What difference does it make?" He poured himself the glass of milk and stuffed the jug in its former place inside the fridge. If his bladder was going to leak regardless, he might as well not go to bed thirsty; may as well aim for a two-fer.

His dad glimpsed down at the watch on his wrist once and sighed, rubbing a hand down his haggard face. "Alright," he said, making it clear he wasn't looking for an argument this early in the morning. "Did you already get the spares from the closet?" Hawk nodded, taking three big gulps of his drink. Then his father asked, "Is that the second time this week?"

Hawk hesitated a few seconds before confessing under his breath, "Third." His cheeks warmed, and he took another gulp from the cup in his hand, hoping the cold milk would cool them down.

He expected a big speech from his father, the whole spiel he got whenever it started acting up this bad again, as if he hadn't heard the same advice over and over throughout his life, ever since he turned eight and it became clear the problem wouldn't be stopping anytime soon. But his dad must have been too exhausted to go into it, because he yawned and said, "Okay. I'm going back to bed. Remember to wash out the cup when you're done."

Hawk's brows creased in surprise. What, no half-hearted attempts to say these accidents would stop on their own one day, as the doctor kept promising? No prying into his life to figure out what was going on to flare it up this bad? Was Hawk hoping his dad would read his mind and know what it was that had been stressing him out, and be there with some real advice?

His parents probably thought it had to do with the fallout from the school fight. Sure, that was part of it. The blowup had been huge, with adults everywhere trying to throw blame around to determine who should have been held responsible for what happened. But Hawk's parents already said everything they were going to say about it, and the role he'd played in it, for now. They had talked it to death. They knew how Hawk felt about Miguel being in the hospital, they knew how he clung to Cobra Kai now like it was his only lifeline.

But his mom and dad didn't know about the other thing.

Hawk opened his mouth for a moment, thinking he should tell his father about what had happened, to tell him that everyone now knew, that his secret was out. All those years of being careful, hiding it during summer camps and overnight school trips, despite the constant anxiety that plagued him by knowing just one slip-up would be all that it took to ruin his life. Now it was out of the bag.

Should he admit that to his father? Surely it was only a matter of time before his parents found out anyways. They weren't there in school to hear the snickering, but a few boys had gotten bold enough to leave comments on his Instagram posts:

_hey it's whizzer_

_lmao still hosing the sheets?_

_bet he wears pullups lol_

It took every ounce of his willpower to not bully them back, to stop himself from daring them to say that shit to his face. He wanted so bad to punch through his phone and knock all their teeth in. But the fear remained in the back of his mind, warning him what his parents would do if they saw him threaten anyone. All he could do for now was remember their names, memorize their faces so if he ran into them in the school parking lot, he could make sure then that they'd never laugh at him again.

In the meantime, he set his posts to private whenever someone from school left a comment like that. It stopped anymore from piling on and kept his parents from seeing them. Yet he knew he was fighting against the doomsday clock hanging over his head. Eventually they would find out.

And then what? Would they call the school again, tell them to make another announcement on his behalf? The very idea of that made him want to throw up, as he imagined how that would go. He could hear Counselor Blatt, with her overly saccharine voice, telling the whole student body, "Hurting people's feelings is mean, so you all need to leave that bedwetter over there - yeah that one with the facial disfigurement – alone before he starts crying again." Hawk would have sooner welcomed the sweet relief of death.

His parents could never find out.

If they did, they would demand to know how it happened, how his peers found out about it. What would he say? The truth? If he told them the truth, that Demetri had outed him during a roast, that would lead to even further questions. Hawk wasn't prepared to admit why Demetri had done it. He couldn't stand the possibility of unloading the whole story onto his mom and dad and then have them say, "Well, what did you expect would happen? Sounds like you got exactly what you deserved."

His parents wouldn't say that, would they? But what if they did? Hawk couldn't take the chance.

So all he told his father was, "Okay. Night, Dad." Hawk watched him walk down the hallway and disappear into his parents' room, closing the door behind him.

Standing there in the darkness of the kitchen, Hawk remembered the guy who'd approached him the day of the school fight, before the brawl broke out, the one who told him that he, too, had wet the bed past the point of childhood normalcy. He'd said there was nothing to be ashamed of. What a crock of shit. If they shouldn't be embarrassed, why did everyone laugh about it? Why did it make him want to disappear off the face of the Earth?

Hawk downed the rest of his drink, telling himself to be strong, that sooner or later it was all going to blow over. But that little needling voice in the back of his head reminded him that nobody was ever _really_ going to forget it. Hawk could beat up as many people as he wanted, that voice said, but everyone would always remember the _real_ him.


	23. Names

Eli.

His parents had been traditional enough to pick his name straight out the _Tanakh_. Eli, the High Priest of Shiloh, one of the last Judges. The one HaShem had cursed. The one who cost his people the Ark of the Covenant. That was the extent of his importance. Maybe Eli had the same curse put on him when his parents named him that. The universe loved shitting on him so much, there may have been some truth to it. That tracked.

Hawk.

The name his Sensei had given him. The one he'd earned. Hawk, like the badass bird. Hawks were fierce, with their broad wings and razor-sharp talons. Those raptors owned the skies, flying high on the warm thermals above everyone's insignificant problems. Most important, they were at the top of the food chain; rarely, if ever, were they the prey.

Eli.

A name that had in his sixteen years come to mean weak, awkward, weird, fit only to be ridiculed.

Hawk.

Strong, intense, aggressive. A name worthy of a winner.

He tested out his new name once with his parents, hoping they might understand why he'd had to adopt it. It was nothing personal, after all. But they didn't understand. His mother and father gave one another an amused glance, like he'd told them a mildly funny joke, and kept right on calling him Eli, as if he'd never brought it up at all.

Not wanting to push his luck with them, Hawk humored his parents, at least.

But he would not humor anybody else.

He made it a priority to get everyone else on board with his name. He had no more problems from his Sensei. His moniker even managed to get him the attention of Moon. And all his friends called him what he wanted without hassle.

All except Demetri, that was. Demetri had to be a hater, right from the start.

_"Don't listen to Eli."_

_"It's Hawk."_

_"Yeah, whatever."_

After the All-Valley Tournament, Demetri had asked him why he didn't register under his legal name. Wasn't he embarrassed by how the announcer had called out his new name instead, while everyone else was normal about it? Did Hawk like standing out now? Didn't he think this was a bit much?

Hawk just rolled his eyes with a contemptuous snort, giving Demetri a patronizing pat on the shoulder. He just didn't get it, did he?

No, he didn't. As the summer passed, it became clear that not only did Demetri not get it, he made it a point to never even try to understand.

_"You think I'm afraid of you? I know who you really are, Eli."_

Of course he wasn't afraid of Eli. Even a nerd like Demetri could feel superior when compared to what he used to be. No wonder Demetri kept trying to pull him back, no wonder he flung his old name out of his mouth whenever given the chance. He must have missed the shred of dominance he felt whenever Eli had been by his side; after all, even Demetri hadn't cried when a fucking hand-puppet had been killed off in a kid's movie.

Because that was what the name Eli meant to him: passive, pushover, a total softie. Above all, non-threatening.

Hawk meant none of those things. Demetri would have to learn that the hard way.

_"I'd like to make a toast: to Eli Moskowitz! Oh, I'm sorry, some of you might know him as Hawk."_

Demetri acted like he missed the old Eli, yet he threw his name back in his face like it was some sort of punishment, like it was something to be ashamed of. And Hawk knew that was true because, deep down, everyone knew he _should_ be ashamed of ever having been Eli the loser, Eli the nerd, Eli the freak.

Yet whenever Demetri did call him by his preferred name, it came packing with as much venom to the bite as if Demetri had actually been a Cobra all along. Hawk the jerk, Hawk the asshole, Hawk the real zero.

Whatever. Demetri could say the word "_Hawk_" with as much contempt as he wanted. It didn't make a difference. Because in his inability to understand why names mattered, in his refusal to get with the program, helping sour things between them, Demetri had made his name one of the ugliest sounds to his own ears.

Eli.

_"Who's that?"_ the other kids at the party had asked.

Names that went unspoken no longer carried meaning. Names that went unspoken could no longer hurt you.

Only Hawk would remain.

So, in the end, the joke was on Demetri. Wasn't it?

_"Sorry, Eli."_


End file.
